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YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY 

OF 

GERMANY. 



by . y 

CHARLOTTE M?' YONGE, 

Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe," "Book of 

Golden Deeds," " Young Folks' History of 

Greece, &c 




BOSTON: 
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY, 

FRANKLIN ST., CORNER OF HAWLEY. 



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COPYRIGHT BY 

D. LOTHROP 8c CO. 
I878. 



PREFACE. 

r I ^HERE is here an endeavor to sketch the main 
outlines of the history of the German Em- 
pire, though the number of states, each with a 
separate history, makes it difficult to trace the line 
clearly. The names are, for the most part, given 
in their German form, rather than by their English 
equivalents. 

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 
Eldekfield, Ottebboubn. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter. 

1. — The Ancient Germans . 
2.— Valhall . ... 

3. — The Germans and Romans. 
4. — The Nibelonig Heroes . 
5.— The Franks. 496—765 . 
6.— Karl the Great. 768—814 

7.— Ludwig I., the Pious. 814—840 
Lothair I. 840—855. 
Ludwig II. 855—875 . 
Karl II., the Bald. 875—876 
Karloman. 876—880 
Karl III., the Thick. 880—887 
Arnulf. 887—899 
Ludwig IY., the Child. 899—612 

8.— Konrad I. 912—917 
Heinrich I. 917—936 
Otto I., the Great. 936—973 

9. — The Saxon Emperors — 

Otto II., the Red. 973—983 
Otto III., the Wonder. 983—1000 
St. Heinrich II. 1000—1024 . 



B.C. 60— a.d. 400 



Page. 
13 
21 
30 
40 
47 
60 



73 



83 



VI. 



Contents. 



10. — The Franconian Line — 

Konrad II., the Salic. 1024—1039 
Heinrich III. 1039—1054 
Heinrich IV. 1054—1106 
Heinrich V. 1106—1114 



11, 



-Lothar II. 1125—1137 
Konrad III. 1137—1152 



12.— FriedrichL, Barbarossa. 1157—1178 

13. ; — Friedrich I., Barbarossa (continued). 

Heinrich VI. 1189—1197 

14.— Philip. 1198—1208 

Otto IV. 1209—1218 . 

15.— Friedrich H. 1218 

16.— Friedrich II. (continued). 1250 

17.— Konrad IV. 1250—1254 

Wilhelm. 1254—1256 

Kichard. 1256—1257 

18.— Eodolf. 1278. . 
19.— Adolf. 1291—1298 
Albrecht. 1298 

20.— Heinrich VII. 1308—1313 
Ludwig V. 1313—1347 

21.— Gunther. 1347—1347 
Karl IV. 1347-1378 

22.— Wenzel. 1378—1400 

23.— Kuprecht. 1400—1410. 
Jobst. 1410—1410 
Siegmund. 1411. 

24.— Albrecht II. 1438—1440 
Friedrich III. 1440—1482 

25.— Friedrich IH. 1482—1493 
26.— Maximilian. 1493—1519 
27.— Charles V. 1519—1529 
28.— Charles V. 1530—1535 
29.— Charles V. 1535 
30.— Ferdinand I. 1556—1564 
31.— Maximilian II. 1564 
32.— Rudolf II. 1576—1612 
33.— Matthias. 1612—1619 
34.— The Revolt in Bohemia — 

Ferdinand II. 1619—1621 



1174—1189 



329 



Contents. 



35.- 



-G-ustaf Adolf and Wallenstein 
Ferdinand II. 1621—1634 



. — Ferdinand II. 
Ferdinand III. 



1634—1637 
1637 



37.— The Siege of Vienna — 
Leopold I. 1657—1687 

38. — War of the Succession — 
Leopold I. 1635—1705 

39.— Joseph I. 1705—1711 

40.— Karl VI. 1711—1740 

41.— Karl VII. 1740 

42.— Franz I. 1745—1765 . 

43.— Joseph H. 1765—1790 . 

44.— Leopold II. 1790—1792 

45.— Franz II. 1792 

46.— Franz II. 1804—1806 

47. — French Conquests — 

Interregnum. 1807—1815 

48.— Interregnum. 1815—1835 

49. — Interregnum. 1848 

50.— Wilhelm I. 1870—1877 



337 
349 



358 



377 
384 
392 
401 
412 
423 
429 



443 



462 
469 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Map. 

Page. 

v Ancient German Village - - 15 

v Sacrifice to Woden ----- 17 

*Volkyria - 23 

»The Elves - 27 

The Velleda warning Drusus 31 

' Germanicus burying the Slain - 33 

Brunhild's Flight - - - - - -49 

-Battle of Tours ------ 53 

St. Boniface felling the Oak - - - 57 

Karl the Great and Witikind - - - - 61 

Karl the Great entering St. Peter's 65 

Karl the Great in his School ... - 67 

Haroun al Kaschid's Gifts - 71 

. Ludwig the Pious - - - - - - 74 

Odo appealing to Karl the Fat ... 81 

The Last Tribute of the Magyars 85 

Adelheid Hiding in the Corn - - - - 90 

Otto's Flight - - - - - 95 

Opening the Tomb of Karl the Great 99 
St. Henry ------- 102 

• Heinrich IV. carried off 109 

Penance of Heinrich IV. - 113 

Lothar II. leading the Pope's Horse - - 119 

' The Women of Weinsberg - 123 

Fiiedrich I. refuses the Milanese Submission • - 129 

Faithfulness of Sieveneichen - - - - 133 

ix. 



x. List of Illustrations. 

PAGE. 

'Friedrich I., kneeling to Heinrich the Lion - 137 

The Diet at Mainz - - - - - 143 

Richard the Lion Heart and Heinrich VI. - - 147 

■ Heinrich VI. .-_... 150 
Murder of Philip - - - - 155 
Otto IV. finds his Bride dead .... 159 
Friedrich II. putting on the Crown of Jerusalem - 167 
Friedrich II. receiving Isabel of England - - 175 
Execution of Conradin and Friedrich - - 189 
German Castle ._-.__ Jflg 
Mediaeval Costume - 210 
Heinrich VII. - - - - - - 213 

Adolf 215 

Karl IV. 222 

Arnold von Winkelried - 227 

Wenzel 231 

Huss at Constance .... - 235 

Siegmund ------ "238 

, Albrechtll. 244 

.Friedrich III. - 246 

•Maximilian and Albert Durer - - - - 255 

■Maximilian ------ 261 

■ Luther and his Thesis - 265 
Charles V. 271 

' Luther at Wartburg - - - - - 275 

1 Charles V. and Fugger - - - - 285 

I Flight of Charles V. - - . - 293 

vCharles V. in the Cloister, St. Just - - 297 

•Ferdinand I. 301 

Maximilian II. - - - - - - 307 

Eudolf and Tycho Brahe - - - - 315 

Matthias 322 

Friedrich V. 327 



List of Illustrations. 



^ Ferdinand II. - 


- 


PAGE. 

331 


"Wildenstein Castle - 


. ' 


339 


v Gustaf Adolf - 


- 


342 


1 Death of Wallenstein 


- 


345 


" Bernhard of Saxe Weimar 


- 


350 


'Peace of Westphalia 


- 


355 


Leopold I. .... 


- 


369 


\ Friedrich I. King of Prussia (Coronation) 


- 


369 


v Marlborough and Eugene 


■ 


373 


Joseph I. 


- 


379 


"Karl VI. 


- 


385 


> Maria Theresa - 


- 


393 


' Karl VII. 


- 


397 


' The Queen of Poland 


- 


405 


' Friedrich the Great and Zeithen 


- 


409 


Maria Theresa and Kaunitz 


- 


415 


1 Joseph II. holding the Plough 


- 


419 


■ Leopold II. - - ■ ■ 


- 


427 


Napoleon and Franz 11. 


- 


437 


Queen Louise pleading with Napoleon 


- 


445 


• Metternich and Napoleon 


- 


449 


The Allies entering Paris 


- 


453 


Wilhelm I 


- 


473 



tfOUNG FOLKS' HISTOKY OF GEKMANY 



CHAPTER I. 



THE ANCIENT GERMANS. 



* I ^HE history of the German Empire rightly 
-*- begins with Karl the Great, but to under- 
stand it properly it will be better to go further back, 
when the Romans were beginning to know something 
about the wild tribes who lived to the north of Italy, 
and to the coast of the Gaulish or Keltic lands. 

Almost all the nations in Europe seem to have 
come out of the north-west of Asia, one tribe 
after another, the fiercest driving the others farther 
and farther to the westward before them. Tribes 
of Kelts or Gauls had come first, but, though they 
were brave and fierce, they were not so sturdy as 
the great people that came after them, and were 
thus driven up into the lands bordering on the At- 
lantic Ocean; while the tribes that came behind 

them spread all over that middle part of Europe 

13 



14 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

which lies between the Alps and the Baltic sea. 
These tribes all called themselves Deutsche which 
meant the people ; indeed, most of them do so still, 
though we English only call those Dutch who live 
in Holland. Sometimes they were called Ger, 
War, or Spear-men, just as the Romans were called 
Quirites; and this name, Spear-men or Germans, 
has come to be the usual name that is given to them 
together, instead of Deutsch as they call themselves, 
and from which the fine word Teutonic has been 
formed. 

The country was full of marshes and forests, with 
ranges of hills in which large rivers rose and strag- 
gled, widening down to their swampy mouths. 
Bears and wolves, elks and buffaloes, ran wild, and 
were hunted by the men of the German tribes. 
These men lived in villages of rude huts, surrounded 
by lands to which all had a right in common, and 
where they grew their corn and fed their cattle. 
Their wives were much more respected than those 
of other nations ; they were usually strong, brave 
women, able to advise their husbands and to aid 
them in the fight ; and the authority of fathers and 
mothers over their families was great. The men 
were either freemen or nobles, and they had slaves, 
generally prisoners or the people of conquered 



The Ancient Germans. 



15 



countries. The villages were formed into what 
were called hundreds, over which, at a meeting of 
the freemen from all of them, a chief was elected 
from among the nobles ; and many of the tribes had 
kings, who always belonged to one family, descended, 
it was thought, from their great god Woden. 




AN'CIENT GERMAN VILLAGE. 

The German tribes all believed in the great god 
Woden, his brother Frey, and his son Thor, who 
reigned in a gorgeous palace, and with their children 
were called the Asa gods. Woden was all-wise, and 
two ravens whispered in his ear all that passed on 



16 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

the earth. The sun and moon were his eyes. The 
moon is so dull because he gave the sight of that 
eye for one draught of the well of wisdom at the 
foot of the great ash tree of life. He was a fearful 
god, who had stone altars on desolate heaths, where 
sacrifices of men and women were offered to him, 
and the fourth day of the week was sacred to 
him. 

Fre}^ was gentler, and friendship, faith, and free- 
dom were all sacred to him. There is a little con- 
fusion as to whether Friday is called after him or 
Frigga, Odin's wife, to whom all fair things be- 
longed, and who had priestesses among the German 
maidens. Thor, or, as some tribes called him, 
Thunder, was the bravest and most awful of the 
gods, and was armed with a hammer called Miolner, 
or the Miller or Crusher. Thunder was thought 
to be caused by his swinging it through the air, 
and the mark in honor of him was "[", meant to 
be a likeness of his hammer. It was signed over 
boys when they were washed with water imme- 
diately after they were born ; and in some tribes 
they were laid in their father's shields, and had 
their first food from the point of his sword. 

These three were always the most honored of the 
Asa gods, though some tribes preferred one and 



The Ancient Germans. 19 

some the other; but Woden was always held to be 
the great father of all, and there were almost as 
many stories about the Asir as there were about the 
Greek gods, though we cannot be sure that all were 
known to all the tribes, and they were brought to 
their chief fulness in the branch of the race that 
dwelt in the far North, and who became Christians 
much later. Some beliefs, however, all had in com- 
mon, and we may understand hints about the old 
faith of the other tribes by the more complete 
northern stories. 

There was a great notion of battle going through 
everything. The Asa gods were summer gods, and 
their enemies were the forces of cold and darkness, 
the giants who lived in Jotenheim, the land of 
giants. All that was good was mixed up with light 
and summer in the old Deutsch notions; all that 
was bad with darkness and cold. Baldur, the son 
of "Woden, was beautiful, good, and glorious ; but 
Loki, the chief enemy, longed to kill him. His 
mother, Frigga, went round and made every crea- 
ture and plant swear never to hurt Baldur, but she 
missed one plant, the mistletoe. So when all his 
brothers were amusing themselves by throwing 
things at Baldur, knowing they could not hurt him, 
Loki slyly put in the hand of his blind brother 



20 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Hodur a branch of mistletoe which struck him 
dead. But Frigga so wept and prayed that it was 
decreed that Baldur might live again provided 
everything would weep for him; and every thing 
accordingly did weep, except one old hag who sat 
under a tree, and would shed no tears for Baldur, 
so he might not live, only he was given back to his 
mother for half the year, and then faded and van- 
ished again for the other half. But Loki had his 
punishment, for he was chained under a crag with 
a serpent for ever dropping venom on his brow, 
though his wife was always catching it in a bowl, 
and it could only fall on him when she was gone to 
empty the bowl at the stream. 

It is plain that Baldur meant the leaves and trees 
of summer, and that the weeping of everything was 
the melting of the ice ; but there was mixed into 
the notion something much higher and greater re- 
specting the struggle between good and evil. 



CHAPTER II. 



VALHALL. 



THE hall of Woden was called Valhall, * and 
thither were thought to go the souls of 
the brave. There were believed to be maidens 
called Valkyr, or the choosers of the slain — Hilda, 
Guda, Truda, Mista, and others — who floated on 
swan's wings over the camps of armies before a 
battle and chose out who should be killed. Nor 
was such a death accounted a disaster, for to die 
bravely was the only way to the Hall of Woden, 
where the valiant enjoyed, on the other side of the 
rainbow bridge, the delights they cared for most in 
life — hunting the boar all day, and feasting on him 
all night ; drinking mead from the skulls of their 
conquered enemies. Shooting stars were held to be 
the track of weapons carried to supply the fresh 

* Val meant a brave death in battle. 
21 



22 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

comers into Valhall. Only by dying gallantly 
could entrance be won there ; and men would do 
anything rather than not die thus, rush on swords, 
leap from crags, drown themselves, and the like, 
for they believed that all who did not gain an en- 
trance to the Hall of the Slain became the prison- 
ers of Loki's pale daughter Hel, and had to live on 
in her cold, gloomy, sunless lands, sharing her 
bondage. 

For once Loki and his children, and the other 
evil beings of the mist land, had made a fierce at- 
tack on Woden, and had all been beaten and bound. 
Fenris, the son of Loki, was a terrible wolf, who 
was made prisoner and was to be bound by a chain ; 
but he would only stand still on condition that Tyr 
or Tiw, the son of Woden, should put his right 
hand into his mouth in token of good faith. The 
moment that Fenris found that he was chained, he 
closed his jaws and bit off the hand of Tiw, whose 
image therefore only had one hand, and who is the 
god after whom Tuesday is named. 

Valhall was not, however, to last for ever. There 
was to come a terrible time called the Twilight of 
the Gods, when Loki and Fenris would burst their 
chains and attack the Asa gods ; Woden would be 
slain by Fenris ; Thor would perish in the flood of 



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Valhall. 25 

poison cast forth by the terrible serpent Midgarcl ; 
and there would be a great outburst of fire, which 
would burn up Valhall and all within, as well as 
the powers of evil. Onty two of the gods, Vidur 
and Wali, were to survive, and these would make 
again a new heaven and earth, in which the spirits 
of gods and men would lead a new and more glo- 
rious life. 

How much of all this grew up later and was 
caught from Christianity we cannot tell ; but there 
is reason to think that much of it was belieA r ed, and 
that heartily, making the German nations brave 
and true, and helping them to despise death. There 
were temples to the gods, where the three figures 
of Woden, Frey, and Thor were always together in 
rude carving, and sometimes with rough jewels for 
eyes. Woden also had sacred oaks, and the great 
stone altars on heaths, raised probably by an earlier 
race, were sacred to him. Sometimes human sacri- 
fices were offered there, but more often sacred 
horses, for horses were the most sacred of their 
animals : they were kept in honor of the gods, 
auguries were drawn from their neighings, and at 
the great yearly feasts they were offered in sacri- 
fice, and their flesh Avas eaten. 

There were gods of the waters, Niord, and Egir, 



26 Young Folks' History of G-ermany. 

who raised the great wave as the tide comes in at 
the mouth of rivers ; and his cruel daughter Rami, 
who went about in a sea chariot causing shipwrecks. 
Witches called upon her when they wanted to raise 
storms and drown their enemies at sea. 

One old German story held that Tiw * was the 
father of Man, and that man's three sons were Ing, 
Isk, and Er, the fathers of the chief Deutsch tribes. 
Isk (or Ash) was the father of the Franks and 
Allemans ; Ing, of the Swedes, Angles, and Saxons ; 
and Er, or Erman, of a tribe called by the Romans 
Herminiones. This same Er or Erman had a temple 
called Eresburg, with a marble pillar on which stood 
an armed warrior holding in one hand a banner 
bearing a rose, in the other a pah- of scales; his 
crest was a cock ; he had a bear on his breast, and 
on his shield was a lion in a field of flowers. A 
college of priests lived around ; and before the army 
went out to battle, they galloped round and round 
the figure in full armor, brandishing their spears 
and praying for victory ; and on their return they 
offered up in sacrifice, sometimes their prisoners, 
sometimes cowards avIio had fled from the foe. 

The image was called Irmansul — sul meaning a 
pillar ; and two pillars or posts were the great token 
* The same word as the Greek Zeus and Latin Deus. 



Valhall. 27 

of home and settlement to the German nations. 
The)' were planted at the gate of their villages and 
towns, where one was called the Ermansaul, the 
other the Rolandsaul. And when a family were 
about to change their home, they uprooted the two 
wooden pillars of their own house and took them 
away. If they went by sea, they threw their pillars 




THE ELVES. 

overboard, and fixed themselves wherever these 
posts were cast up. 

Dutch fancy filled the woods, hills, and streams 
with spirits. There were Elves throughout the 



28 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

woods and plains, shadowy creatures who sported 
in the night and watched over human beings for 
good or harm. The Bergmen dwelt in the hills, 
keeping guard over the metals and jewels hidden 
there, and forging wonderful swords that always 
struck home, and were sometimes given to lucky 
mortals, though they generally served for the fights 
in Valhall; and the waters had Necks and other 
spirits dangerous to those who loitered by the 
water-side. A great many of our best old fairy tales 
were part of the ancient German mythology, and 
have come down to our own times as stories told by 
parents to their children. 

There Avere German women who acted as priest- 
esses to Frigga, or Hertha, the Earth, as she was 
often called. She had a great temple in Rugen, an 
isle in the Baltic ; her image was brought out thence 
at certain times, in a chariot drawn by white heifers, 
to bless the people and be washed in the Baltic 
waters. Orion's belt was called her distaff, and the 
gossamer marked her path over the fields when she 
brought summer with her. 

When one of the northern tribes was going to 
start to the south to find new homes, their wives 
prayed to Frigga to give them good speed. She 
bade them stand forth the next morning in the rising 



Valhall. 29 

sun with their long hair let down over their chins. 
"Who are these long beards?" asked Woden. 
" Thou hast given them a name, so thou must give 
them the victory," said Frigga; and henceforth the 
tribes were called Longbeards, or Lombards. 

Before a battle, the matrons used to cast lots to 
guess how the fortunes of the day would go, doing 
below what the Valkyr did above. Sometimes a 
more than commonly wise woman would arise 
among them, and she was called the Wala, or 
Velleda, and looked up to and obeyed by all. 




CHAPTER III. 

THE GERMANS AND ROMANS. 

B.C. 60— A.D. 400. 

JUST as it was with the Britons and Gauls, 
the first we know of the Germans was 
when the Romans began to fight with them. 
When Julius Csesar was in Gaul, there was a great 
chief among the tribe called Schwaben — Suevi, as 
the Romans made it — called Ehrfurst,* or, as in 
Latin, Ariovistus, who had been invited into Gaul 
to settle the. quarrels of two tribes of Gauls in the 
north. This he did by conquering them both ; but 
they then begged help from Csesar, and Ehrfurst 
was beaten by the Romans and driven back. 
Caesar then crossed the Rhine by a bridge of boats 
and ravaged the country, staying there for eighteen 
days. He was so struck with the bravery of the 

* Honor prince. 




THE VELLEDA WARNING DRUSUS. 



32 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Germans that he persuaded their young men to 
serve in his legions, where they were very useful ; 
but they also learned to fight in the Roman fashion. 

Germany was let alone till the time of the Em- 
peror Augustus, when his step-son Drusus tried to 
make it a province of Rome, and built fifty for- 
tresses along the Rhine, besides cutting a canal be- 
tween that river and the Yssel, and sailing along 
the coasts of the North sea. He three times en- 
tered Germany, and in the year B.C. 9, after beating 
the Marchmen, was just going to cross the Elbe, 
when one of the Velledas, a woman of great stature, 
stood before the army and said, " Thou greedy rob- 
ber! whither wouldst thou go? The end of thy 
misdeeds and of thy life is at hand." The Romans 
turned back dismayed ; and thirty days later Drusus 
was killed by a fall from his horse. 

Drusus' brother Tiberius went on with the at- 
tempt, and gained some land, while other tribes 
were allies of Rome, and all seemed likely to be 
conquered, when Quinctilius Varus, a Roman who 
came out to take the command, began to deal so 
rudely and harshly with the Germans that a young 
chief named Herman, of Arminius, was roused. 
He had secret meetings at night in the woods with 
other chiefs, and they swore to be faithful to one 



The Germans and Romans. 35 

another in the name of their gods. When all was 
ready, information was given to Varus, that a tribe 
in the north had revolted. He would not listen to 
Siegert or Segestes, the honest German who ad- 
vised him to be cautious and to keep Herman as a 
hostage, and set out with three legions to put it 
down; but his German guides led him into the 
thickest of the great Teutoberg forest, and the 
further they went the worse this grew. Trunks of 
trees blocked up the road, darts were hurled from 
behind trees, and when at last an open space was 
gained after three days' struggling through the 
wood, a huge host of foes was drawn up there, and 
in the dreadful fight that followed almost every 
Roman was cut off, and Varus threw himself on his 
own sword. 

Herman married the daughter of Siegert, and 
was chief on the Hartz mountains, aided b}^ his un- 
cle Ingomar ; but after five years, a.d. 14, the Enu 
peror Tiberius sent the son of Drusus — who waa 
called already, from his father's successes, German- 
icus — against him. Some of the Germans, viewing 
Siegert as a friend of Rome, beset his village, and 
were going to burn it, when Germanicus came in 
time to disperse them and save Siegert. Thus^ 
nelda, the wife of Herman, was with her father, 



36 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

and was sent off as a prisoner to Rome with her 
baby ; while Germanicus marched into the Teuto- 
berg wood, found the bones of the army of Varus, 
and burnt them on a funeral pile, making a speech 
calling on his men to avenge their death. But 
Herman's horsemen fell on him and defeated him, 
and if the Germans had not been so eager to plun- 
der they would have made a great many prisoners. 
They drove the Romans back across the Rhine, and 
the next year were ready for them, and had a tre- 
mendous battle on the banks of the Weser. In 
this the Romans prevailed, and Herman himself 
was badly wounded, and was only saved by the 
fleetness of his horse. However, he was not 
daunted, and still kept in the woods and harassed 
the Romans, once forcing them to take refuge in 
their ships. 

Tiberius grew jealous of the love the army bore 
to Germanicus, and sent for him to return to Rome. 
Herman thus had saved his country, but he had 
come to expect more power than his chiefs thought 
"his due, and he was slain by his own kinsmen, a.d. 
19, when only thirty-seven years old. His wife 
and child had been shown in Germanicus' triumph, 
and he never seems to have seen them again. It 
was during this war that the great Roman historian 



The Germans and Romans. 37 

Tacitus came to learn the habits and manners of 
the Germans, and was so struck with their simple 
truth and bravery that he wrote an account of 
them, which seems meant as an example for the 
fallen and corrupt Romans of his time. 

There were no more attempts to conquer Ger- 
many after this ; but the Germans, in the year 69, 
helped in the rising of a Gaulish chief named 
Civilis against the Romans, and a Velleda who 
lived in a lonely tower in the forests near the 
Lippe encouraged him. He prevailed for a time> 
but then fell. 

The Germans remained terrible to the Romans 
for many years, and there were fights all along the 
line of the empire, which their tribes often broke 
through; but nothing very remarkable happened 
till the sixth century, when there was a movement 
and change of place among them. This seems to 
have been caused by the Huns, a savage tribe of 
the great Slavonic or Tartar stock of nations, who 
came from the East, and drove the Deutsch nation, 
brave as they were, before them for a time. 

Then it was that the Goths came over the Dan- 
ube, and, dividing into the Eastern and Western 
Goths, sacked Rome, conquered the province of 
Africa, and founded two kingdoms in Spain and in 



38 Young Folks' History of Crermany. 

Northern Italy. Their great king Theuderick, 
who reigned at Verona, was called by the Germans 
Dietrich of Berne, and is greatly praised and hon- 
ored in their old songs. 

Then Vandals followed the Goths, and took 
Africa from them ; and the Lombards, or Long- 
beards, after the death of Theuderick, took the lands 
in Northern Italy which had been held by the 
Goths, founded a kingdom, a,nd called it Lom- 
bardy. The Burgundians (or Burg Castle men) 
gained the south-east part of Gaul all round the 
banks of the Rhone, and founded a kingdom there ; 
and the Sachsen (ssex or axe men) settled them- 
selves on the banks of the Elbe, whence went out 
bands of men who conquered the south of Britain. 
The Franks (free men) were, in the meantime, 
coming' over the Rhine, and first plundering the 
north of Gaul, then settling there. All the west- 
ern half of the Roman Empire was overspread by 
these Deutsch nations from the shores of the Baltic 
to the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic Ocean to 
the Carpathian Mountains; and instead of being 
conquered by the Romans, the Deutsch nations 
had conquered them. 

It is chiefly with the Franks, Sachsen, Schwaben, 



The Germans and Romans. 39 

and Germans that this history is concerned ; but 
before going any further, there is a great mytho- 
logical story to be told, which all believed in as 
truth. 




CHAPTER IV. 



THE NIJBELOKLG HEROES. 



r I ''HERE are two versions of this strange 
■*- ancient storjr — a northern one made in 
heathen times, a German one in Christian days. 
According to this one, the three gods, Woden, 
Loki, and Hamer, came down to a river in Nibel- 
heim — the land of mist — to fish; and Loki killed 
an otter and skinned it. Now this otter was really 
a dwarf named Ottur, whose home was on the river 
bank, with his father and brothers, Fafner and 
Reginn, and who used to take the form of the 
beast when he wanted to catch fish. When his 
brothers saw what had befallen him, they demanded 
that Loki should, as the price of his blood, fill the 
otter's skin with gold ; and this Loki did, but when 
he gave it, he laid it under a curse, that it should 
do no good to its owner. 

The curse soon began to be fulfilled, for Fafner 

40 



The Nibelonig Heroes. 41 

killed his father to gain the treasure, and then 
turned himself into a serpent to keep watch over 
it, and prevent Reginn from getting it. But 
Reginn had a pupil who was so strong that he 
used to catch wild lions and hang them by the tail 
over the wall of his castle. The northern people 
called him Sigurd, but the Germans call him Sieg- 
fried,* and say that his father was the king of the 
Netherlands, and that he was a hero in the train of 
Dietrich of Berne. Reginn persuaded Siegfried to 
attack the dragon Fafner and kill him, after which 
he bade the champion bathe in the blood and eat 
the heart. The bath made his skin so hard that 
nothing could hurt him, except in one spot between 
his shoulders, where a leaf had stuck as it was 
blown down from the trees ; and the heart made him 
able to understand the voices .of the birds. From 
their song Siegfried found out that Reginn meant 
to slay him, and he therefore killed Reginn and 
himself took the treasure, in which he found a tarn 
cap, which made him invisible when he put it on. 
Serpents were called worms in old Deutsch, and 
the Germans said that their city of Wmms was 
the place where Siegfried killed the dragon. They 
called him Siegfried the Horny. 

* Conquering Peace. 



42 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Now there was a lady of matchless strength 
named Brunhild;* but she had offended Woden, 
who touched her with his sleep-thorn, so that she 
fell into a charmed sleep, surrounded with a hedge 
of flame. Siegfried heard of her, broke through 
the circle of fire, and woke the lady, winning her 
heart and love ; but he had then to leave her in 
her castle after three days and go back to the com- 
mon world, carrying her ring and girdle with him. 
But by a magic drink, as one story says, he was 
thrown into a sleep in which he lost all remem- 
brance of Brunhild. 

The great song of Germany, the Nibelungen lied, 
begins when Chriemhild,f the fair daughter of the 
king of Burgundy, had a dream in which she saw 
her favorite falcon torn to pieces by two eagles. 
Her mother told her that this meant her future hus- 
band, upon which she vowed that she would never 
marry. Soon after, Siegfried arrived and fell in 
love with her ; but she feared to accept him because 
of her dream. However, the fame of Brunhild's 
beauty had reached the court, and Chriemhild's 
brother Gunther wanted to wed her. She would, 
however, marry no one who could not overcome 
her in racing and leaping; and as she was really 

* Valkyr of the Breastplate. t Valkyr of the Hamlet. 



The Nibelonig Heroes. 43 

one of the Valkyr, Gunther would have had no 
chance if Siegfried, still forgetful of all concerning 
Brunhild, had not put on his cap, made himself in- 
visible, took the leap, holding Gunther in his arms, 
and drew him on in the race so as to give him the 
victory. 

Then Gunther married Brunhild, and Siegfried 
Chriemhild. The first pair reigned in Burgundy, 
the second at Wurms, and all went well for ten 
years, when unhappily there was a great quarrel 
between the two ladies. The northern song says 
it was about which had the right to swim furthest 
out into the Rhine ; the German, that it was which 
should go first into the Cathedral. Brunhild said 
that Siegfried was only Gunther's vassal ; on which 
Chriemhild returned that it was to Siegfried, and 
not to her husband, that Brunhild had yielded, and 
in proof showed her the ring and girdle that he 
had stolen from her. 

Brunhild was furiously enraged, and was deter- 
mined to be revenged. She took council with 
Haghen, her husband's uncle, a wise and far- 
traveled man, whom every one thought so prudent 
that he was the very person whom poor Chriemhild 
consulted on her side as to the way of saving her 
husband. He had never loved Siegfried, and 



44 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

when his niece told him there was only one spot 
where her husband could be wounded, he bade her 
sew a patch on his garment just where it was, that 
he might be sure to know where to guard him. 
There was a great hunting match soon after, and 
Haghen contrived that all the wine should be left 
behind, so that all the hunters growing thirsty, lay 
down to drink at the stream, and thus Siegfried 
left defenceless the spot marked by his wife. 
There he was instantly stabbed by Haghen's con- 
trivance. According to the heathen northern 
story, Brunhild, viewing herself as his true wife, 
burnt herself on a pile with his corpse in the Nibe- 
lung. She had only repented too late. 

Chriemhild knew Haghen was the murderer, be- 
cause the body bled at his touch; but she could 
not hinder him from taking away the treasure and 
hiding it in a cave beneath the waters of the Rhine. 
She laid up a vow of vengeance against him, but 
she could do nothing till she was wooed and won 
by Etzel or Atli, king of the Huns, on condition 
that he would avenge her on all her enemies. For 
thirteen years she bided her' time, and then she 
caused her husband to invite Gunther and all the 
other Burgundians to a great feast at Etzelburg in 
Hungary. There she stirred up a terrible fight, of 



The Nibelonig Heroes. 45 

which the Nibelungen lied describes almost every 
blow. Dietrich of Berne at once rushed in and 
took King Etzel and Queen Chriemhild to a place 
of safety, keeping all his own men back while the 
fight went on — Folker, the mighty fiddler of Bur- 
gundy, fiddling wildly till he too joined in the fray, 
and. then Dietrich's men burst in, and were all 
killed but old Sir Hildebrand, who, on his side, 
slew the mighty fiddler, so that of all the Burgun- 
dians only Gunther and Haghen were left. Diet- 
rich then armed himself, made them both prison- 
ers, and gave them up to Chriemhild ; but in her 
deadly vengeance she killed them both; where- 
upon Hildebrand slew her as an act of justice, and, 
with Etzel and Dietrich, buried the dead. 

I have told you this story in this place because 
two real personages, Attila the Hun and Theude- 
rick of Verona, come into it, though there is no 
doubt that the story was much older than their 
time, and that they were worked into it when it 
was sung later. It shows what a terrible duty all 
the Deutsch thought vengeance was. There are 
stories in the north going on with the history of 
Siegfried's children, and others in Germany about 
Dietrich. It seems he had once had to do with 
Chriemhild in her youth, for she had a garden of 



46 Young Folks' History of Grermany. 

roses seven miles round, guarded by twelve cham- 
pions, and the hero who could conquer them was 
to receive from her a chaplet of roses and a kiss. 
Dietrich, Hildebrand, and ten more knights beat 
her champions, and took the crowns of roses, but 
would not have the kisses, because they thought 
Chriemhild a faithless lady ! 

In real truth, Attila, king of the Huns, lived 
fully one hundred years before the great Theude- 
rick of Verona. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FRANKS. 

796-765. 

THE most famous of the German tribes were 
the Franks, who lived on the banks of the 
Rhine, and were in two divisions, the Salian, so 
called because they once came from the river Yssel, 
and Ripuarians, so called from ripa, the Latin Avord 
for the bank of a river. 

The Franks were terrible enemies to the Romans 
in the north-east corner of Gaul, and under their 
King Chlodio won a great many of the fifty for- 
tresses that Drusus had built, in especial Trier and 
Koln, as they shortened the old name of Colonia, a 
colony. Chlodio only joined with the Romans to 
fight against that dreadful enemy of them all, 
Attila the Hun, who was beaten in the battle of 

Soissons. After his death, those of his people who 
47 



48 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

did not go back to Asia remained on the banks of 
the Danube, and their country is still called Hun- 
gary. 

The kings of these Franks were called Meer- 
wings, from one of their forefathers. The only 
great man who rose up among them was Chlodwig,* 
who pushed on into Gaul, made Soissons his home, 
took Paris from the Gauls, and married Clotilda 
(famous Valkyr), the daughter of the Burgundian 
king, who was a Christian. The other Deutsch 
tribes went to war with Chlodwig, the Alle- 
mans especially ; and it was in the midst of a battle 
with them, fought at Zulpich, that Chlodwig 
vowed that if Clotilda's God would give him the 
victory, he would worship Him rather than Freya 
or Woden. He did gain the victory, and was bap- 
tized by St. Remigius at Rheims, on Christmas 
Day, 496, with three thousand of his warriors. 
Most likely he thought that, as Gaul was a Chris- 
tian country, he could only rule there by accepting 
the Christian's God ; but he and his sons remained 
very fierce and wild. He conquered the Ripuarian 
Franks and made them one with his own people, 

* The French call him Clovis, but he shall have his proper 
name here — Chlodwig, famous war. 



The Franks. 51 

and he also conquered the Goths in the South of 
France. 

But when he died the kingdom was broken up 
among his sons, and they quarreled and fought, so 
that the whole story of these early Franks is full of 
shocking deeds. There were generally two king- 
doms, called Oster-rik, eastern kingdom, and Ne- 
oster-rik, not eastern, or western kingdom, besides 
Burgundy, more to the south. The Oster-rik 
stretched out from the great rivers to the forests of 
the Allemans and Saxons, and was sometimes 
joined to the Ne-oster-rik. The chief freemen used 
to meet and settle their affairs in the month of 
March, and this was called a Marchfielcl ; but the 
king had great power, and used it very badly. 

It was never so badly used as by the widows 
of two of the long-haired kings, Hilperik and Sieg- 
bert, brothers who reigned in the West and East 
kingdoms. Siegbert's wife, Brunhild, was the 
daughter of the king of the Goths in Spain ; Frede- 
gond, the wife of Hilperik, was only a slave girl, 
and hated Brunhild so much that she had Siegbert 
murdered. The murders Fredegond was guilty of 
were beyond all measure. Her step-sons were 
killed by her messengers, and all who offended her 
were poisoned. When her husband died, she 



52 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

reigned in the name of her son and then of her 
grandson at Soissons, as Brunhild did at Metz. 
Brunhild really tried to do good to her country, 
and made some fine buildings, both churches and 
convents ; but she was fierce and proud, and drove 
away the Irish priest Cohimbmnus, when he tried 
to. rebuke her grandson Theuderick for his crimes. 
Theuderick died in 613, leaving four sons; and 
then Chlotar, Fredegond's grandson, attacked the 
Oster-rik. Brunhild was old, and was hated by 
her people ; no one would fight for her, and she 
tried in vain to escape. One of her grandsons 
rode off on horseback and was never heard of more, 
and the other three were seized with her. Frede- 
gond was dead, but she had brought up Chlotar in 
bitter hatred of Brunhild, and he accused her of 
having caused the death of ten kings. He paraded 
her through his camp on a camel, put her great-grand- 
children to death before her eyes, and then had 
her tied by the body to a tree and by the feet to a 
wild horse, so that she died a horrible death. 

After this the two kingdoms were joined to- 
gether ; but this wicked race of kings become so 
dull and stupid that they could not manage their 
own affairs, and they had, besides, granted away a 
great many of their lands in fee, as it was called, 



The Franks. 55 

to their men, who were bound in return to do them 
service in war. These lands were called fiefs, and 
the holders of them were called Heer Zog — that 
is, army leaders — Duces (Dukes) in Latin; and 
Grafen, which properly meant judges, and whose 
Latin title was Comites (comrades), commonly 
called Counts. A city would have a Graf or 
Count to rule it for the king and manage its affairs 
at his court; and besides these who were really 
officers of the king, there were the Freiherren, or 
free lords, who held no office, and were bound 
only to come out when the nation was called on. 
They came to be also termed Barons, a word 
meaning man. 

The kings lived on great farms near the cities in 
a rough sort of plenty, and went about in rude 
wagons drawn by oxen. The long-haired kings 
soon grew too lazy to lead the people out to war, 
and left everything to the chief of their officers, 
who was called the Mayor of the Palace. 

Pippin* of Landen was a very famous Maj^or of 
the Palace in the kingdom of the East Franks or 
Oster-rik, and his family had the same power after 
him. His grandson, Pippin of Herstall, Duke of 
the Franks, beat the West Franks at Testri in 687, 
* A pet name for father. 



56 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

and ruled over both kingdoms at once, though 
each had its own Meerwing king. 

His son was Karl* of the Hammer, or Charles 
Martel, who was also Mayor of the Palace and 
Duke of the Franks, both East and West. He 
saved all Christendom from being overrun by the 
Saracen Arabs, by beating them in the great battle 
of Tours in 731. 

His son was Pippin the Short, who had the same 
power at first, and became a great friend and 
helper to the Pope, who was much distressed by 
the Lombard kings in Northern Italy, who threat- 
ened to take Rome from him. Pope Zacharias re- 
warded Pippin by consenting to his becoming king 
of the Franks when the last of the Meerwings gave 
up his crown and went into a monastery. 

Pippin's own subjects, the Franks, were Chris- 
tians ; but the tribes in Germany and Friesland still 
worshiped Woden and Thor. The English Church 
sent missionaries to them, and Pippin helped them 
as much as he could. The greatest was St. Boni- 
face, who converted so many Germans that he was 
made Archbishop of Mainz, and this has always 
been the chief see in Germany. At Giesmar, the 
Hessians honored a great oak sacred to Thor, and 

* A strong man. 



The Franks. 59 

Boniface found that even the Christians still feared 
the tree. He told them that if Thor was a god he 
would defend Ins own ; then, at the head of all his 
clergy, he cut down the tree, and the people saw 
that Thor was no god. When he baptized them 
he made them renounce not only the devil, but 
Woden and all false gods. At last he was martyred 
by the heathen Frisians in 755. 




CHAPTER VI. 

KARL THE GEEAT. 

768-814. 

BECAUSE of the help Pippin gave the Pope 
he was made a patrician of Rome ; and, 
when he died in 768, his son Karl inherited the 
same rank. Karl was one of the mightiest and 
wisest of kings, who well deserves to be called the 
Great, for though he was warlike, he fought as 
much for his people's good as for his own power, 
and tried to make all around him wise and good. 
Wherever he heard of a good scholar, in Italy ©r in 
England, or in any part of Gaul, he sent for him to 
his court, and thus had a kind of school in his 
palace, where he and his sons tried to set the rough, 
fierce young Franks the example of learning from 
the Romans and their pupils the old Gauls. Karl 

could speak and read Latin as naturally as his own 

60 



- '- -r-'- 




Karl The Great. 63 

native Deutsch; but he never could learn the art 
of writing, though he used to carry about tablets 
and practise when he had leisure. However, he 
had much really deep knowledge, and a great mind 
that knew how to make the best use of all kinds of 
learning. 

All the German tribes were under him as king 
of the Franks except the Saxons, whose lands 
reached from the Elbe to Thuringia and the Rhine. 
They were heathens, who refused to listen to St. 
Boniface and his missionaries, and still honored the 
great idol at Eresbury called the Irmansaul. Karl 
invaded the land, overthrew this image, and hoped 
he had gained the submission of the Saxons, send- 
ing missionaries among them to teach them the 
truth ; but they were still heathens at heart, and 
rose against him under their chief Witikind, so that 
the war altogether lasted thirty years. The Saxons 
rose against him again and again, and once so en- 
raged him that he caused four thousand five hun- 
dred who had been made prisoners to be put to 
death ; but still Witikind fought on till his strength 
was crushed. At last he submitted, and was 
brought to see Karl at Atigny, where they made 
friends, and Witikind consented to be baptized and 
to keep the peace. 



64 Young Folks' History of G-ermany. 

When Witikind died, five years later, Karl made 
Saxony into eight bishoprics. He made bishops as 
powerful as he could, giving them guards of soldiers, 
and appointing them, when he could, Counts of the 
chief cities of their sees, because he could trust them 
better than the wild, rugged Frank nobles. The 
great bishoprics of Metz, Trier, and Koln rose to be 
princely states in this way. 

While Karl was gone the first time to Saxony, 
the Lombard king, Desiderius, began to harass 
Rome again ; and the Pope, Leo III., again sent to 
ask aid from Karl, who crossed the Alps, besieged 
Pavia, and sent the king into a monastery, while he 
was himself crowned with the iron crown that the 
Lombard kings had always worn. Then he went 
on to Rome, where he dismounted from his horse 
and walked in a grand procession to the Church of 
St. Peter on the Vatican hill, kissing each step of 
the staircase before he mounted it, in remembrance 
of the holy men who had trodden there before him. 
In the church the pope received him, while the choir 
chanted " Blessed be he that cometh in the Name 
of the Lord." 

But the Lombards chose the son of their late king 
for their leader, and there was another war which 
ended in their being quite crushed. Karl also 



66 Young Folks' History of German}/. 

gained great victories over the Moors in Spain, and 
won the whole of the country as far as the Ebro ; 
but the wild people of the Pyrenees, though they 
were Christians, were jealous of his power, and rose 
on his army as it was returning in the Pass of 
Roncesvalles, cutting off the hindmost of them 
especially Roland, the warden of the marches of 
Brittany, about whom there are almost as many 
stories as about the heroes of the Nibelung. 

He had another great war with the Avars and 
Bohemians, people of Slavonic race, who lived to 
the eastward of the Deutsch, and had ring-forts or 
castles consisting of rings of high walls, one within 
another. One of the Swabians who fought under 
Karl was said, at the taking of one of these forts, 
to have run his spear through seven of the enemy, 
at once! The ringforts were taken, and Karl 
appointed all around the border or marches of 
his kingdoms March-counts, Mark-grafen, or Mar- 
quesses, who Avere to guard the people within from 
the wild tribes without. One mark was Karnthen 
or Carinthia, going from the Adriatic to the 
Danube; another was CEsterreich or Austria, the 
East Mark; and another was Brandenburg. All 
the countries in his dominion were visited four times 
a year by officers who made reports to him, and 



Karl The Great. 69 

judged causes ; but if people were not satisfied, they 
might appeal to the Palace judge, or Pfalzgraf — 
Palgraf, as he was called. 

His lands streached from the Baltic Sea to the 
Mediterranean and the Ebro, from the Bay of Biscay 
to the borders of the Huns and Avars ; and when 
he held his great court at Paderborn in 729 he had 
people there from all the countries round, and even 
the great Khalif Haroun al Raschid (the same of 
whom we hear so much in the Arabian Nights) 
being likewise an enemy of the Moors in Spain, sent 
gifts to the great king of the Franks — an elephant, 
a beautiful tent, a set of costly chessmen, and a 
water-clock, so arranged that at every hour a little 
brazen ball fell into a brass basin, and little figures 
of knights, from one to twelve, according to the 
hour, came out and paraded about in front. 

Pope Leo X. came likewise to Paderborn, and 
by his invitation Karl made a third visit to Rome 
in the year 800, and was then made Emperor of the 
West. The old Roman Empire was revived in him, 
the citizens shouting, " Long live Carolus Augustus 
the Csesar ; " and from that time Csesar, or, as the 
Germans call it, Kaisar, has always been the title 
of Karl's successors in what he called the Holy Ro- 
man Empire, as he held his power from the Church, 



70 Young Folks' History of G-ermany. 

and meant to use it for God's glory. The empire 
was a gathering of kingdoms — namely, the old 
Frank Oster-rik and Ne-oster-rik, Germany, the 
kingdom of Aquitane, the kingdom of Bur- 
gundy, of Lombardy, and Italy. Karl was king of 
each of these, but he meant to divide them between 
his sons and Bernhard, * king of Italy. The little 
Ludwig, at three years old, was dressed in royal 
robes and sent to take possession of Aquitaine, 
while Karl himself reigned at Aachen, where he 
built a grand palace and cathedral. His two elder 
sons died young, and when the Kaisar fell sick at 
Aachen, Ludwig was his only son. He took the 
youth into the cathedral, made him swear to fear 
and love God, defend the Church, love his people, 
and keep a conscience void of offence, and then 
bade him take the crown off the altar and put it on 
his own head. Karl lived a year after this, and 
died in 814, one of the greatest men who ever 
lived. 

* Firm Bears. 



CHAPTER VII. 

LUDWIG L, THE PIOUS, 814-840. 

LOTHAR L, 840-855. 

LUDWIG II., 855-875. 

KARL II. , THE BALD, 875-876. 

KARLOMAIST, 876-S80. 

KARL III., THE THICK, 880-887. 

ARNULF, 887-899. 

LUDWIG IV., THE CHILD, . . . 899-S12. 

LUDWIG THE PIOUS is the same emperor 
as he whom the French call Louis the 
debonair, but it is better to use his real name, 
which is only a little softened from Chlodwig. He 
was a good, gentle man, but he had not such 
strength or skill as his father to rule that great 
empire, and he was much too easily led. He was 
crowned Emperor by Pope Stephen, and then 
gave kingdoms to his sons; Lothar* had the 
Rhineland, the old home of the Franks, and was 
joined in the empire with his father ; Pippin had 

* Famous Warrior. 

73 



74 



Young Folks' History of Germany. 



Aquitaine, and Ludwig Bavaria ; but none of 
them were to make peace or war without consent 
of the Emperor. Bernhard, King of Italy, their 
cousin, did not choose to reign on these terms, and 
marched against the Emperor, but was defeated, 
made prisoner, condemned by the Franks, and put 




LUDWIG THE PIOUS. 



to death. Lothar had his kingdom, and was sus- 
pected of having prevented him from being par- 
doned; but the Emperor always grieved over his 
death as a great sin. 

In 814, Ludwig I. lost his wife, and soon after 
married a Bavarian lady named Judith, who had a 
son named Karl. Ludwig wanted a kingdom for 



Ludivig X, the Pious. 75 

this boy, and called a diet at Wurms, where a new 
kingdom called Germany was carved out for him ; 
but this greatly offended his brothers, who rose 
against their father, and overcame him. They 
wanted to drive him into becoming a monk, but 
this he would not do, and his German subjects rose 
in his favour, and set him on his throne again. 

He forgave his sons, and sent them back to their 
kingdoms ; but in a few years they were all up in 
arms again, and met the Emperor near Colmar. 
All Ludwig's men deserted him when the battle 
was about to begin, so that the place was after- 
wards called the Field of Falsehood. The Emperor 
fell into his sons' hands, and Lothar, in the hope of 
keeping him from reigning again, persuaded the 
clergy to tell him it was his duty to submit to 
penance of the higher degree, after which nobody 
was allowed to command an army. The meek 
Emperor, who had always reproached himself for 
Bernhard's death, was willing to humble himself, 
and, stripped off his robes, he lay on a couch of 
sackcloth and read a list of his sins, which had 
been drawn up by his foes, and made him confess 
not only that he had been unjust to Bernhard, but 
that he had been a blasphemer, a perjured wretch, 
and fomenter of strife. Then thirty bishops, one 



76 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

after the other, laid their hands on his head, while 
the penitential psalms were sung, and all the time 
Lothar looked on from a throne rejoicing in his 
father's humiliation. But his pride had shocked 
every one, and Iris two brothers, with a number of 
Franks, rose and rescued the Emperor from him, 
treating their father with all love and honor, and 
the bishops bidding him resume his sword and belt. 
Even Lothar was obliged to come to him. and say, 
" Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy 
sight," and the gentle old man kissed him, and sent 
him to Italy. 

When Pippin died there was a fresh war, for the 
people of Aquitaine would allow no Franks to 
come near his son, from whom therefore Ludwig 
took the kingdom, and there was much fighting 
and many horrors, all made worse by the ravages of 
the heathen Northmen and Danes. At Wurms, a 
treaty was made by which Lothar was to have all 
the eastern half of the empire, Karl all the western, 
leaving young Ludwig only Bavaria. Ludwig, in 
his anger, took up arms, and just as the war was 
beginning, the good gentle old Emperor became so 
ill that he retired to an island in the Rhine named 
Ingelheim, and there died. The priest who at- 
tended him asked if lie forgave his son. " Freely 



Ludwig I., the Pious. 77 

do I forgive him," said the old man ; "but fail not 
to warn him that he has brought down my grey 
hairs with sorrow to the grave." Ludwig I. died 
in 840, in his sixty-third year. 

Karl then joined Ludwig against Lothar, and at 
Fontanet, near Auxerre, there was a desperate 
battle, 150,000 men on each side, with a front six 
miles long to each army. The fight lasted six 
hours, and Lothar was beaten; but his brothers 
seem to have been shocked at their own victory 
over a brother and an emperor, and there was a 
fast of three days after it. They soon after made 
peace at the treaty of Verdun, in 843, by which 
Ludwig had the countries between the Rhine, the 
North Sea, the Elbe, and the Alps — what in fact 
is now called Germany. Lothar had, besides Italy, 
all the Rhineland, and the country between the 
Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone. 
This was called Lothar's portion, or Lotharingia, 
and part is still called Lorraine. 

Karl's portion was all to the west of this, and 
was then called Karolingia, after Ms name, but it 
did not keep the title, and after a time came to be 
known as France. 

Ludwig II., King of Germany, was much tor- 
mented, both by the Northmen and the Slavonic 



78 Young Folks' History of Crermany. 

nations to the east, Avars, Bohemians, or Czechs, 
as they call themselves, and the Magyars, who lived 
in the country once settled by Attila's Huns, and 
therefore called Hungary. There is a story that, 
when the Saxons and Thuringians came home 
defeated from a battle with these people, their 
wives rose up and flogged them well for their 
cowardice. 

Lothar I., the Emperor, died in 855, and his son 
Ludwig is counted as the second Kaisar of the 
name, but he died without children, in 875, and 
then there was a war between all his brothers and 
Ludwig, King of Germany, and Karl, of Karolingia ; 
ending in Karl, who was commonly called the 
Bald, becoming Kaisar Karl II. ; but he had many 
more kingdoms on Ms hands than he could manage, 
and was terribly tormented with the Northmen, 
besides having quarrels on his hands with all his 
nephews. His brother Ludwig of Germany made 
matters worse by dividing his kingdom into three 
at his death, in 876, for his three sons. Karloman, 
the eldest of these, attacked the Kaisar, and drove 
him to the alps, where he died at the foot of Mount 
Cenis, in 877, after a miserable reign. 

Karloman then became Emperor. He was also 
King of Bavaria and of Italy, and his next brother 



Karl II., the Bald. 79 

Ludwig was King of Saxony, where an old chroni- 
cler says that his life was useless alike to himself, 
the Church, and his kingdom ; and so, when Karl- 
oman died, the empire was given to the youngest 
brother, Karl III., * called der Dicke, the Thick, 
who turned out not to be much wiser or more 
active. In his time the Northmen made worse 
inroads than ever ; and though on the death of his 
cousin, called Louis the Stammerer, France likewise 
fell to him, he was quite unable to protect his 
people anywhere ; and when the Count of Paris 
forced his way through the Northern fleet in the 
Seine, and came to beg his help, he could do 
nothing but offer a sum of money to buy them off, 
Everybody was weary of him, and at last an 
assembly was held at Tribur, on the Rhine, which 
declared him unfit to rule, and sent him into a 
monastery, where he died in two months, in 888. 
Arnulf, a son of Karloman, was made Emperor, 
but the French took the brave Count of Paris for 
their king, and France never formed part of the 
empire again. Arnulf was a brave Kaiser, and so 
beat off the Northmen that they never greatly 
molested Germany again; but he died young, in 

* The French call him Charles le G-ros and he is generally 
termed the Fat, but Thick seems to express dullness as well as 
stoutness. 



80 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

899, when his son Ludwig III., called the Child, 
was only six years old. He had a stormy reign, so 
tormented by the Magyars, who were trying to 
push beyond Hungary, that he died of grief, quite 
worn out, in 912. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

KONKAD I., 912-917. 

HEINRICH I., 917-936. 

OTTO L, THE GEE AT, 936-973. 

A S the Karling line was worn out, the German 
•*- *- nobles chose another Frank, Konrad,* Count 
of Franconia, for their king, and when at the end 
of six years he died, he bade them choose in his 
stead Count Heinrich f of Saxony, who had been 
his enemy, and beat him in a great battle, but whom 
he thought the only man who had skill enough to 
defend Germany. 

Heinrich was hawking on the Harz Mountains 
when the news of this advice was brought to him, 
and he is therefore called Heinrich the Fowler. He 
was wise and brave, and brought all the great duke- 
doms of Germany under his rule. These were, 
besides Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, and 
Lorraine. His great wars were with the Magyars 

* Bold Speech. t Home Ruler. 

83 



84 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

in Hungarjr. Though he beat them in one battle, 
he was forced to make a truce for nine years, and 
pay them tribute in gold all the time. During all 
that time he was preparing himself and his people, 
and training his nobles to fight on horseback, by 
games which some people say were the beginning 
of tournaments. The men of lower rank were to 
be also trained to fight from the time they were 
thirteen years old, and to meet near the villages 
every three days to practise the use of arms. Be- 
sides, he saw that the great want was of walled 
cities, where the people might take shelter from 
their enemies ; so he built towns and walled them 
in, and commanded that one man out of every nine 
should live in a bury, as these fortresses were called. 
Thus began the burghers of Germany. The public 
meetings, fairs, markets, and feasts were to take 
place within the towns, and justice was to be dealt 
out there. Stores were to be kept in case of a 
siege, and the country people were to send in a part 
of their produce to supply them, and in this way 
they were made the great gathering-places of the 
country. 

When Heinrich thought the country quite ready 
to fight against- the Magyars, he defied them when 
next they sent for tribute, by giving them nothing 



Heinrieh I. 87 

but a wretched mangy dog. The next year they 
entered Germany to punish him, but he beat them 
at Keuschberg. Then they lighted beacon fires on 
the hills to rouse their people, and a great multi- 
tude mustered to overwhelm the Germans ; at this 
same place, Keuschberg, Heinrieh unfolded the ban- 
ner of St. Michael, and rushed on the enemy, all 
his men crying out the Greek response, " Kyrie 
eleison" " Lord, have mercy," while the Magyars 
answered with wild shouts of "Hui! Hui ! " but 
they were totally defeated, and driven back within 
Hungary. After this his troops hailed him as Em- 
peror. He also conquered the Duke of Bohemia, 
and made him do homage to the kingdom of Ger- 
many. He beat back the Wends, who lived on the 
marshes of the Baltic Sea east of the Saxons, and 
were their great enemies ; and he also tried to drive 
back the Danes. He tried to get these nations to 
become Christians, but he only succeeded with some 
of the Bohemians, where the good Duke Wenceslaf 
was a Christian, already, thanks to his mother, St. 
Ludmilla. He is the same of whom the pretty 
story is told that we have in the ballad of " Good 
King Wenceslas," though he was not really a king. 
He was murdered by his wicked brother Boleslaf, 
and the Christians were persecuted for some yea f h. 



88 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

The good King Heinrich meant to go to Rome to 
be crowned Kaisar by the Pope, but he never could 
be spared long enough from home, and died in the 
year 936. 

His. son Otto had been already chosen King of 
Germany, and was married to Edith, sister to the 
English king Athelstan, a gentle lady, who saved 
and petted a deer which had taken refuge in her 
chamber. He was crowned at Aachen by the arch- 
bishop of Mainz, and the great dukes were present 
in right of their offices — the Duke of Eranconia, 
as carver ; the Duke of Lorraine, as chamberlain ; 
the Duke of Swabia, as cup-bearer ; the Duke of 
Bavaria, as master of the horse. Standing in the 
middle aisle of the cathedral, the archbishop called 
on all who would have Otto for their king to hold 
up their right hands. Then, leading him to the 
Altar, he gave him the sword to chastise the enemies 
of Christ, the mantle of peace, the sceptre of power, 
and then, anointing head, breast, arms, and hands 
with oil, crowned him with the golden crown .of 
Karl the Great ; and there was a great feast, when 
all the dukes served him according to their offices ; 
but he had a stormy reign. The Dukes of Fran- 
conia, and Lorraine rebelled, and so did his own 
brothers ; but he was both brave, wise, and forgiv- 



Otto L, the Great. 89 

4ng, so lie brought them all to submit, and forced 
Boleslaf of Bohemia to leave off persecuting the 
Christians. 

The Karling King of France, Louis IV., had a 
great quarrel with his vassals, Hugh, Count of 
Paris, and Richard, Duke of Normandy, who called 
in the help of Harald Blue-tooth, King of Denmark. 
Louis had married another English princess, and 
Otto came to help his brother-in-law, thus beginning 
a war with Harald which ended in his making Den- 
mark subject to the empire ; and he also subdued 
the Slavonic Duchy of Poland. He founded bish- 
oprics, like Karl the Great, wherever he conquered 
heathens, and sent missions with them. Magde- 
burg was one of his great bishoprics. 

The Karling line of Kings of Italy had come to 
an end with King Lothar, who had been married to 
Adelheid, a Karling herself. She was young and 
beautiful, and the Lombard duke, Berenger of Iv- 
rea, wanted to marry her to his son. When she re- 
fused, he shut her up in a castle on the Lago di 
Garda ; but a good monk named Martin made a 
hole through the walls of her dungeon, and led her 
wandering about, traveling by night, and liiding 
by day in the standing corn and reeds, till she 
reached a fisherman's hut, where she remained for 



90 



Young Folks History of Germany. 



some days in the dress of a fisher-boy, while Brother 
Martin carried news to her friends. They took her 
to the castle of Canossa, and sent to entreat the 
help of Otto. He had lost his English wife ; so 
Adelheid offered to marry him, and give him her 




ADELHEID HIDING IN THE CORN. 



claim to the kingdom of Italy. He collected his 
troops, and came down on Berenger, who was be- 
sieging Canossa, drove him away, and, taking the 
Queen in triumph to Pavia, held at once his wed- 
ding and his coronation as King of the Lombards. 
He was, however, not at peace, for his son 



Otto /., the Great. 91 

Ludolf, Duke of Swabia, rebelled against him, out 
of jealousy of his brother Heinrich ; but he was 
tamed at last, and came barefoot to kneel at his 
father's feet for pardon, which the King gave him, 
but he forfeited his dukedom, and was sent to 
Italy. After this he had another terrible war with 
the Magyars, ending in a most horrible battle on 
the Leeh, when the river ran red with blood, and 
out of 60,000 Magyars only seven came home to 
tell the tale, and those with slit noses and ears. 
The Germans on the field of battle hailed Otto as 
Kaisar ; and as he was soon after called into Italy 
to set to rights the disorder caused by Ludolf's 
bad management, he went to Rome, and was 
crowned Emperor, while his son Otto was crowned 
King of the Germans, at Aachen, in 961. Things 
were in a sad state at Rome. The Popes were 
now so powerful that ambitious men wanted to be 
Popes, and there was bribery, fighting, and murder 
to gain the holy office. So Otto called a council 
of Bishops, and tried to bring things into better 
order, but when he went away they soon fell back 
again, and great crimes were committed. 

Otto had nearly as large an empire as Karl the 
Great, for if he had less to the west and south, he 
had more to the north and east. He was well 



92 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

named the great, for he was a good and pious, wise 
and warlike man. He spent his last years mostly 
in Italy, but he died, in 973, at Memleben, Avhile 
kneeling before the altar in the church, so peace- 
fully that he was thought to be only asleep. He 
was buried at Magdeburg, beside his first wife, the 
English Edith. 




CHAPTER IX. 

THE SAXON EMPERORS. 

OTTO II., THE RED, 973- 983. 

OTTO III., THE WONDER, 983-1000. 

ST. HEINRICH II., 1000-1024. 

OTTO II. was called the Red, and was but 
nineteen years old when his father died, 
though he had been already crowned and married. 
His wife was Theophano, daughter of the Eastern 
Emperor Nicephorus. Bishop Liutprand had been 
sent to ask her of her father, but was greatly dis- 
pleased with Constantinople, where the Emperor 
told him that the Germans would only fight when 
they were drunk, and that their weapons were too 
heavy to use. Also, he said that there were no 
real Romans save at Constantinople, and made a 
sign with his hand to shut Liutprand's mouth 
when he began to speak. The Eastern Caesars no 
doubt greatly despised the attempt of the barba- 



94 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

rous Germans to call themselves Kaisars, while the 
German Bishop thought 400 stout Germans could 
have beaten their whole army, and called Constan- 
tinople a "perjured, lying, cheating, rapacious, 
greedy, avaricious, nasty town." 

Otto was so young that almost all the great 
dukes whom his father had forced to do homage 
hoped to shake off his yoke, but he reduced them 
all. Then Lothar, King of France, went to war 
with him, and swore that he would drink up all 
the rivers in Germany ; to which Otto replied that 
he would cover all France with straw hats, for the 
Saxon troops used to go out to war in summer 
with straw hats over their hemlets. Charles, the 
brother of Lothar, marched through Lorraine and 
seized Aachen, where he turned the golden eagle 
on the roof of the palace of Charles the great with 
his beak towards France ; but Otto met him there, 
routed him, and hunted him back to Paris. There, 
while the Germans besieged the city, Lothar offered 
to settle the matter by a single combat with Otto, 
but the Germans answered, " We always heard 
that the Franks set little store by their King, and 
now we see it." They could not take the city, and 
eon eluded a peace, by which the right of the em- 
pire to Lorraine was established. 



Otto II, the Bed. 97 

Otto was the son of the Empress Adelheicl, and 
thus was half Italian, and he cared very much for 
the affairs of Italy. Rome was in a dreadful state, 
for the people had hated having Popes thrust on 
them by German Emperors, and broke out again 
and again. One Pope had just been murdered, 
and another set up in his place, and Otto thought 
it was time to interfere with a high hand, and also 
a cruel one ; so he came to Rome, and inviting the 
chief citizens to a feast in the open space before St. 
Peter's Church, there seized and put to death all 
whom he thought dangerous to the authority of 
Rome. 

The southern provinces of Italy had been prom- 
ised him as the portion of his wife Theophano, but 
as they were not given up to him, he marched to 
take possession of them ; but the Greek Emperor 
had allied himself with a body of Saracens who had 
settled in part of Sicily, and Otto met with a terri- 
ble defeat at Basantello in Calabria. He had lost 
his horse in the battle, and made for the sea-shore 
on foot. A Jewish rabbi, coming by offered him 
his horse, and on this horse, with the shouts of the 
pursuing Saracens still ringing in his ears, the Em- 
peror dashed into the sea towards a Greek ship, 
which took him on board. He spoke Greek so 



98 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

well that no one found out he was a German ; and 
though one Slavonic merchant was there who knew 
him, he did not betray him, but contrived that the 
ship should put in at the city of Rossano, where 
Otto escaped unperceived, and swam ashore. There 
he found his wife Theophano, but she, as a Greek, 
was proud of the victory of her nation, and instead 
of comforting him, scornfully said, " How my 
countrymen have frightened you!" Otto took 
this bitterly to heart, and meant to assemble a fresh 
army and retrieve his cause, but his health had 
been hurt by his campaign, and he grew so ill that 
he called a Diet at Verona, and obtained of his 
nobles the assurance that they would choose his 
three-year-old son King of Germany and Kaisar, and 
that the two Empresses, Theophano and Adelheid, 
should govern in his name. He died in the year 
983, when only twenty-nine years old. 

Otto III. was carefully brought up by his mother, 
and Gerbert, Abbot of Magdeburg, and was so 
learned that he was called the Wonder of the World. 
He was brave and able, and was only sixteen when 
he went to Rome and was crowned Emperor. His 
design was to make Rome his capital, reign there as 
Western Emperor, and render Germany only a 
province; and he made his tutor, Gerbert, Pope. 




OPENING THE TOMB OK KAKL THE GREAT. 



Otto III., the Wonder. 101 

But his schemes were cut short by his death in 
1000, in the city of Paterno, having spent very 
little of his short life in Germany, though he 
chose to be buried at Aachen, where shortly before 
he had opened the tomb of Karl the Great, and 
found the robed, crowned, and sceptred corpse 
sitting undecayed on its chair of state just as it had 
been placed 200 years before. 

This year, 1000, was that when the end of the 
world was expected daily to happen, and it had a 
great effect upon the whole world. Heinrich, Duke 
of Bavaria, Otto's cousin through a daughter of 
Otto the Great, was elected in his place, and was 
so devout that he and his wife Kunigund * of Lux- 
emburg are both reckoned as saints. He endowed 
the Bishopric of Bamberg with lands of his own, 
and therefore is generally drawn with the model of 
the cathedral in his arms. He was crowned Em- 
peror at Rome, and as he, like Otto, held that the 
Kings of the Germans had the right of reigning 
over Rome and Italy, he took the title of King of 
the Romans. Thenceforth the German Kings were 
so called until they were crowned as Emperors at 
Rome. An Emperor was usually crowned four 
times — at Aachen, as King of the Romans, which 
♦Bold War. 



102 



Young Folks' History of Germany. 



really meant of Germany ; at Pavia, of Italy ; at 
Monza, of Lombardy, with an iron crown, said to 
be made partly of one of the nails of the cross ; and 
at Rome, as Kaisar or Emperor. It was the choice 




ST. HENRY. 



of the nobles of Germany which gave him all these 
rights, though he was never Kaisar till his corona- 
tion by the Emperor. St. Heinrich did all he could 



St. Heinrich II. 103 

to promote the conversion of the Slavonic nations 
round him, and was a friend and helper of the 
good King Stephen of Hungary. The last event of 
his life was going to make a visit to Robert, King 
of France, a man as pious and saintly as himself. 
He died on his way back, in 1024, the last of the 
Saxon Emperors. 




CHAPTER X. 

THE FEANCONIAN LINE. 

KONRAD II., THE SALIC, . . 1024-1039. 

HEINRICH III., 1089-1054. 

HEINRICH IV., 1054-1106. 

HEINRICH V., 1106-1114. 

THE German dukes, archbishops, counts, bish^ 
ops, and great abbots all met on a plain near 
Mainz, on the banks of the Rhine, to choose a new 
king. Two Konrads of Franconia, both cousins, 
and descended from a daughter of Otto the Great, 
stood foremost, and they agreed that whichever was 
elected should receive the ready submission of the 
other. The elder one, who was chosen, is known 
as Konrad the Salic, because he traced his descent 
from the old Meerwing kings ; but neither he nor 
his family resembled them in indolence. With the 
help of his son Heinrich, he did much to pull down 

104 



Heinrieh III. 105 

the power of the dukes, and he favored the great 
free cities, which were fast growing into strength. 

Konrad was crowned Emperor in 1027, and had 
two kings present at the ceremony — Rudolf, the 
last King of Burgundy, and our own Danish King 
Knut, whose daughter Kunhild married Heinrieh, 
the son of the Kaisar. The Kaisar's own wife was 
Gisela, niece of Rudolf, who on his death left the 
kingdom to him. This did not mean the duchy of 
Burgundy, which belonged to France, but the old 
kingdom of Aries, or Provence, Dauphine, Savoy, 
and part of Switzerland, over which the Kings of 
Germany continued to have rights. 

Konrad had wars with the Bohemians and Hun- 
garians, but gained the advantage with both, and 
he was also a great law-maker. In his time it was 
settled that lands should not be freshly granted on 
the death of the holder, but should always go on to 
the next heir ; and that no man should forfeit his 
fief save by the judgment of his peers, thus prevent- 
ing the dukes and counts from taking away the 
grants to their vassals at their own will. He died 
in 1039, and was buried at Speyer. 

His son Heinrieh III. was twenty-two when he 
began to reign, and was well able to carry out his 
father's policy, so far as spirit and resolution went. 



106 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

The quarrels at Rome were worse than ever, there 
being no less than three Popes, and he marched to 
Rome, sent them all into monasteries, and set up 
one of his own choosing, namely, Clement II. In- 
deed, though his was but a short reign, he was the 
maker of no less than four Popes, for each died 
almost as soon as he was appointed ; but there was 
a strong feeling growing up that this was not the 
right way for the head of the Western Church to 
be chosen, and it was most strongly felt by a young 
Roman deacon called Hildebrand, who resolved to 
make a reformation. 

Things grew worse when Heinrich III. died in 
the flower of his age, in 1054, leaving a little son, 
Heinrich IV., of five years old, under the charge of 
Ins mother, Agnes, a good woman, but not strong 
enough to keep the great dukes in order ; and she 
tried to bribe her enemies by giving them lands, 
which only made them more able to do her mis- 
chief. The Church lands, the great bishoprics and 
abbeys, were given either by favor, fear, or money, 
and some dioceses went from father to son, like 
duchies and counties, and. the clergy were getting 
to be as bad as the laity. To check all this, Hilde- 
brand led Pope Stephen II. to forbid all priests, 
even those who were not monks, to marry ; and 



Heinrich IV. 107 

also a great council was collected at Rome, at the 
Lateran Gate, where it was decreed that henceforth 
no clergyman should ever receive any benefice from 
the hands of a layman, but the bishops should be 
chosen by their clergy, and the Pope himself by the 
seventy chief clerg}^ of Rome, who were called 
cardinals, and wore scarlet robes and hats, in mem- 
ory of the old Roman purple. This was in the 
year 1059. 

Three years later the great nobles of Germany 
resolved to be rid of the rule of the Empress Agnes. 
Hanno, archbishop of Koln, invited her and her 
son to spend the Easter of 1062 at the island of 
Kaiserswerth, on the Rhine, and while there the 
young Heinrich was invited on board a pleasure- 
boat, which instantly pushed off for the mainland. 
The boy, then thirteen years old, tried to leap out 
and swim back to his mother, but he was held back ; 
and though his mother stood weeping and begging 
for help, no one would do anything but yell at those 
who were rowing the boat rapidty to Koln, where 
Hanno proclaimed himself Regent, and declared 
that the affairs of the kingdom should be managed 
by the bishop of whatever diocese the King was 
in. 

Hanno hoped thus to rule the kingdom, but his 



108 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

plan turned against him, for Adalbert, Bishop of 
Bremen, got Heinrich into his power, and kept him 
amused with constant feasting and revelry, which 
did his whole character much mischief; and he 
learnt besides to dislike and distrust all the great 
dukes and nobles. 

When he came of age he kept Adalbert as his 
chief adviser, and was very harsh and fierce to his 
subjects, especially the Saxons. There was a ris- 
ing against him, and he was forced to send away 
Adalbert, and marry Beatha, the daughter of the 
Margrave of Susa ; but he hated and ill-used her, 
and his court was a place of grievous wickedness, 
while there was constant war with his people. 

In the meantime Hildebrand had been chosen 
Pope, in the year 1073, and he at once began to 
enforce the decrees of the Lateran Council, of winch 
the Germans had taken no notice. The decree was 
read aloud at Efrurt by the Archbishop of Mainz 
to a synod of bishops, and such a roar of fury rose 
that his life was in danger, and Heinrich thought 
his subjects would all hold with him in resisting 
it. 

But Heinrich's violence and harshness had set 
his people against him, and the Saxons appealed 
to Rome against his injustice. Gregory VII. sum- 



Heinrich IV. Ill 

monecl him to Rome to answer their charges, excom- 
municating at the same time all the bishops who 
had obtained- their sees improperly. Upon this 
Heinrich called together the German bishops at 
Wurms, and made them depose the Pope. Gregory 
replied by pronouncing the King deposed, and re- 
leasing his subjects from their oath of allegiance. 
Germany and Italy were divided between the Pope 
and the King, and the Germans agreed that unless 
the King Avere absolved within the year they must 
regard him as deposed, and choose another in his 
stead. Heinrich felt that he must give way, and 
he made a most dangerous winter journey across 
the Alps by Mont Cenis, with Bertha and her child, 
blinded by snow or sliding along in frost. The 
Queen and her child were wrapped in an ox-hide, 
and dragged along in a sledge. 

In Lombardy the bishops and nobles were favor- 
able to Heinrich, but he only sought to make his 
peace with the Pope, and hastened to Canossa, the 
castle of Countess Matilda of Tuscany, Gregory's 
greatest friend, where the Pope then was. He 
came barefooted and bareheaded, in the hair shirt 
of a penitent, and was kept for three days thus 
doing penance in the court of the castle before he 
was admitted to the chapel, where the Pope ab- 



112 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

solved him, but only on condition that, till the 
affairs of Germany should be settled by the Pope, 
he should not assume his place as King. Nor had 
his humiliation hindered the Germans, who hated 
him, from electing a new king, Rudolf of Swabia, 
who was called the Priests' King. All Germany 
was thus at war, and Heinrich declared that Swabia 
was forfeited, and gave it to Friedrich of Hohen- 
staufen, who had married his daughter Agnes. 
Gregory, after a time, took the part of Rudolf, and 
Heinrich, on his side, appointed a Pope of his own ; 
so that there were two Popes and two Kings of the 
Romans, until the battle of Zcitz, where Rudolfs 
right hand was cut off by Gottfried of Bouillon, and 
he was afterwards killed. 

After this Heinrich prevailed, and pushed into 
Italy, where he beat Matilda's army, and besieged 
Rome for three years ; while Gregory retreated to 
Salerno, where he was protected by the Norman 
Duke of Calabria. Rome was taken, and Heinrich 
crowned Kaisar by the Antipope. Gregory VII. 
died while among the Normans, his last word being, 
" I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity ; 
therefore do I die in exile." His successor, Urban 
II., went on the same system of keeping the Church 
above all temporal power. 



Heinrich V. 115 

For a little while Heinrich triumphed, but his 
enemies stirred up his sons against him. Konrad, 
the elder, died at war with him; Heinrich, the 
second, actually stripped his father of his robes, and, 
in spite of his tears and entreaties, forced him to 
sign his abdication. Then the old man wandered 
about half-starved, and came to the Bishop of Spe- 
yer to entreat for some small office about the 
cathedral, but this could not be, as he was excom- 
municated, and he had even to sell his boots to buy 
bread ! He died at Liege, in 1106, and his body 
was put in a stone coffin in an island on the Maas, 
and watched day and night by a hermit till 1111, 
when Heinrich V. came to an agreement at Wurms 
with the Pope that, though bishops should do 
homage for the lands they held of him, the King 
should not deliver to them the ring and staff, which 
betokened spiritual power. After this Heinrich IV. 
was buried. Heinrich V. died three years later. 
He had married our Henry the First's daughter 
Matilda, whom we call the Empress Maude. 



CHAPTER XI. 

LOTHAR II., 1125-1137. 

KONRAD III., 1137-1152. 

WHEN Heinricli V. died, without children, 
the Franconian line of Emperors came to 
an end, and ten great nobles from the four chief 
dukedoms met at Mainz to choose a new king. 
Heinrich had left all his own lands to his sister's 
sons, Konrad and Friedrich of Hohenstaufen, and 
one of these hoped to be elected ; but the Germans 
feared that they would bring them as many troubles 
as had arisen under the last Franconians, and there- 
fore chose in their stead Lothar, Duke of Saxony. 

He thought he could never do enough to avoid 
the evils that Heinrich IV. had brought on the 
country, and so he asked Pope Innocent II. to ratify 
his election, and gave up the agreement at Wurms, 
with all rights to homage from bishops. This dis- 

116 



Lothar II. 117 

pleased the Hohenstaufen, and all who held for the 
power of the kings, and there was again a great 
war. The chief supporter of the King Avas Hein- 
rieh the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, who married his 
daughter Matilda, and was made Duke of Saxony. 
Heinrich's family was descended from a forefather 
named Welf, or Wolf, a Christian name often used, 
but of which a very odd story was told. It was 
said that the Countess of Altdorf laughed at a poor 
woman who had three children born at the same 
time, and that, as a punishment, she gave birth to 
twelve sons in one day. She was so much shocked 
that she sent all of them but one to be drowned in 
the lake, but on the way the maid, who was carry- 
ing them in her apron, met the count. He asked 
what she had there. " Whelps," she said ; but he 
pulled aside her apron, and, seeing his eleven little 
sons, had them safely brought up, and they were 
known by the name of Welfen. One of the Welfs 
married into the Italian house of Este, and both in 
Italy and Germany the party of the Pope came to 
be known as Welfs, or Guelfs ; while the party of 
the Kaisar were termed Waiblinger, from the castle 
of Waibling belonging to the Hohenstaufen. The 
Italians made this word into Ghibellini; and for 
many years there were fierce quarrels between the 



118 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Guelfs and Ghibellines, the first upholding the 
power of the Church, the second that of the State. 

These kings of Germany were much less power- 
ful than the great Emperors of the house of Saxony 
and Franconia had been ; and now that all fiefs had 
been made hereditary, the great dukes and mar- 
graves were more independent of them, while the 
counts and barons (Graf en and Freiherren, the 
Germans called them) were likewise more inde- 
pendent of their dukes. Every one was building 
castles and fortifying cities, whence the nobles made 
war on each other, and robbed those who passed on 
the roads. There is a story of a Bishop who gave 
a knight the charge of his castle, and when he was 
asked how those within it were to live, pointed 
down the four roads that met there, to indicate that 
the travelers were to be robbed for the supplies ! 
The larger cities governed themselves by a council, 
and called themselves free Imperial cities, and these 
were the most prosperous and peaceful places both 
in Germany and Italy, for even bishops and abbots 
did not always so keep out of the fray as to make 
themselves respected. The minne-singers, love- 
singers, or minstrels could, however, go about from 
town to town and castle to castle singing their 
ballads, and were always safe and welcome. 




LOTHAR II. LEADING THE POPE'S HORSE. 



Konrad III. 121 

The great Countess Matildia had left all her do- 
minions to the Pope, and Lothar acknowledged this 
right of Innocent II., and crossed the Alps in order 
to be crowned Kaisar. There was an Antipope set 
up by the Ghibellines, who held the Church of St. 
Peter and the Castle of St. Angelo, and as Lothar 
could not drive him out, the coronation had to be 
in the Church of St. John Lateran. He came a 
second time to Italy to put down a great disturbance 
in Lombardy, taking with him Konrad of Hohen- 
staufen, to whom he had restored the dukedom of 
Franconia, and had made standard-bearer to the 
Imperial army. Konrad was a good and noble man, 
brave, courteous, and devout, and respectful to the 
clergy, especially the Pope, which was the more re- 
marked as he was the head of the Ghibelline party. 
The head of the Guelfs, Heinrich the Proud, was 
as much hated as Konrad was loved, for his inso- 
lence to every one from the Pope downwards, and 
for his savage cruelties to the prisoners who fell 
into his hands ; but his father-in-law the Emperor 
favored him, and gave him the Marquisate of 
Tuscany. 

On the way home, Lothar II. was taken ill, and 
died in a peasant's hut in the Tyrol, in 1137. 

Heinrich the Proud fully expected to have been 



122 Young Folks' History of G-ermany. 

chosen King of the Romans, but he had offended 
most of his party, even the Pope himself, and 
Konrad was elected. There was a battle between 
Konrad and Heinrich's brother Welf, at the foot of 
Weinsberg, a hill crowned with a castle, on the 
banks of the Neckar, and in this "Welf" and 
"Waibling" were first used as war-cries. The 
victory fell to Konrad, and he besieged the castle 
till those within offered to surrender. All the 
men were to be made prisoners, but the women 
were to go away in peace, with as much of her 
treasure as each could carry. All Konrad's army 
was drawn up to leave free passage for the ladies, 
the Emperor at their head, when behold a wonder- 
ful procession came down the hill. Each woman 
carried on her back her greatest treasure — husband, 
son, father, or brother ! Some were angry at this 
as a trick, but Konrad was touched, granted safety 
to all, and not only gave freedom to the men, but 
sent the wemon back to fetch the wealth they had 
left behind. The hill was called Weibertrue, or 
Woman's Truth ; and in 1820 Charlotte, Queen of 
Wurtemberg,* with the other ladies of Germany, 
built an asylum there for poor women who have 
been noted for self-sacrificing acts of love. Hein- 
* Daughter of George III. 




THE WOMEN OF WEINSBERG. 



Conrad III. 125 

rich the Proud was reduced, and his two dukedoms 
taken away, Bavaria being given to Leopold, Mar- 
grave of Austria, and Saxony to Albrecht* the 
Bear, already Count of the Borders ; but when 
Heinrich died, Konrad gave back Saxony to his 
son Heinrich the Lion, and Albrecht the Bear be- 
came Margrave of a new border country beyond 
Saxony, called Brandenburg, which he conquered 
from the Wends. 

Germany had had little to do with the first cru- 
sade as a nation, though the noble and excellent 
Gorttfried of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, had been 
its leader, and first King of Jerusalem. But when 
St. Bernard preached the second crusade, Konrad 
took the cross, and went with an army of 70,000 
men. They went by way of Constantinople, and in 
the wild hills of Asia Minor were led astray by 
their guides, starved and distressed, and when the 
Turks set upon them at Iconium, there was such a 
slaughter that only 7000 were left. Konrad went 
on and joined the host of King Louis V. of France 
at Nicea, almost alone, save for the knights from 
Provence, who had joined the French army, and 
whom Louis sent to form a train for their own Em- 
peror. Together they landed at Antioch and be- 
* Nobly bright. 



126 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

sieged Damascus, where Konrad showed great 
valor, and is said to have cut off the head and arm 
of a Turk with one blow of his sword. But they 
could not take the city, and, disgusted with the 
falsehood and treachery of the dwellers in the Holy 
Land, Konrad returned home, and died three years 
after, in 1152. He was the first Kaisar who used 
the double eagle as his standard. 




CHAPTER XII. 

FRIEDRICH I., BARBAROSSA, . . . 1157-1178. 

KONRAD III. left a son, but as lie was very 
young the good king had recommended the 
nobles to choose his nephew Friedrich as their king, 
hoping that as his father was a Hohenstaufen, and 
his mother Jutta a Bavarian, the breach between 
Welfs and Waiblings might be healed. Friedrich 
was thirty-two years old, brave, keen, firm, and 
generous, but fiercely proud, violent, and self-willed. 
He was a grand-looking man, with fair hair and 
blue eyes, and a tinge of red in his beard, which 
made the Italians call him Barbarossa. 

He gave Heinrich the Lion, Bavaria as well as 
Saxony, formed Austria into a duchy instead of a 
mark county, and he also made Windislav of Bo- 
hemia a king instead of a duke. He married Bea- 
trice, the heiress of the county of Burgundy, which 

127 



128 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

meant Provence, with its capital Aries. Konrad 
had never been crowned Emperor, and thus had no 
power in Italy, so that the Lombard cities had 
grown very powerful, and were used to govern 
themselves ; the nobles were like little robber kings 
in their mountain castles, and at Rome, a priest 
named Arnold of Brescia had stirred up the people 
to turn out the Pope, Adrian IV., an Englishman, 
and set up a Republic in imitation of the old Com- 
monwealth. 

Friedrich felt himself called on to set all this 
right. He came over the Alps, marched into Rome, 
seized Arnold of Brescia, and had him executed, 
and then was crowned Emperor by Adrian IV. 
The people of Lodi came to ask his help against 
the citizens of Milan, who had conquered them, 
pulled down the walls of their city, and forced 
them to leave their homes and live in villages. 
Friedrich wrote orders that Lodi should be re- 
stored ; but the Milanese tore his letter to pieces, 
and threw it in the face of his messenger, and most 
of the Italian cities took their part. The Emperor 
blockaded them, and cut off the hands of any un- 
fortunate peasant who was caught trying to bring 
them provisions. They surrendered at last, and he 
made them swear fealtv to him, and left them 




FRJEDRICII I. REFUSES THE M! LANESE SUBMISSION. 



Friedrich /., Barbarossa. 131 

under a judge. But in a short time they rebelled 
again, declaring they would give themselves to the 
Pope instead of the Emperor. Adrian IV. was 
dead, and some of the Cardinals elected Alexander 
III., but the others and the Roman people chose 
another Pope, who called himself Victor IV. 
Friedrich called on both to appear before a Council 
which was to decide between them, but Alexander, 
knowing himself to be rightfully elected, replied 
by declaring that the Emperor had no right to 
summon the successor of St. Peter before a Council. 
So only the friends of Victor came to it, and de- 
clared him to be the true Pope. Alexander then 
excommunicated both Friedrich and Victor, and 
Friedrich came in great wrath over the Alps to 
overthrow the Pope and punish the Milanese, who 
had insulted both him and his Empress in every 
way. He blockaded the city again, and forced it 
to yield. Before the day of surrender, he sent his 
gentle wife Beatrice away, lest she should move 
him from his purpose, and then all the chief citi- 
zens were marched out with their thirty-seven ban- 
ners and the great standard of the city, which had 
a car all to itself when it went out to battle, and 
was embroidered with a Crucifix, beside which 
stood the figure of St. Ambrose giving his blessing. 



132 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

The banners were thrown in a heap, the trumpets 
over them, at the Kaisar's feet, the car was broken 
to pieces, and the unhappy people wept so bitterly 
that even Friedrich's stern warriors shed tears of 
pity. 

He told the citizens that they should have such 
mercy as agreed with justice, and called a diet at 
Pavia to judge them. The diet decided that Milan 
ought to be broken up as Lodi had been, the wall 
thrown down, the ditch filled up, the people forced 
to live in villages, all two miles from the ruined 
city and from one another, and each with a German 
governor. The people took some of their property 
with them, but much was forfeited and plundered, 
and a tenth was given to the churches and convents 
of Germany. Koln had for its share what were 
thought to be the relics of the "Wise Men from the 
East, whom the Germans thenceforth called the 
Three Kings of Koln. Friedrich then appeared at 
Pavia in his crown, which he had sworn never to 
wear again till Milan had been punished, and he 
showed much favor to all the Ghibelline cities of 
Lombardy. Then he marched to Rome, while 
Alexander fled to Benevento, but it was the height 
of summer, and a terrible pestilence broke out in 
Ms army, cutting down many of Friedrich's near 



Friedrich /., Barbarossa. 135 

kindred and best advisers, and great numbers of 
the troops. He was forced to retreat into Lombar- 
dy, but he found the whole country in insurrection, 
guarding the passes of the Alps against him, and at 
Susa a party of armed men broke into his chamber 
at night, and he had only just time to escape by 
another door, while a faithful knight named Her- 
man of Sieveneichen threw himself into the bed to 
receive the death-blow while his master escaped. 
However he was recognized, and though in their 
rage the Lombards were going to slay him, they 
respected his faithfulness, and he was spared. 

Germany was up in arms, and Friedrich had to 
subdue the rebellious princes. He was a great 
ruler, and founded Munich and several other great 
towns at home ; but in the meantime the cities of 
Italy had united with the Pope against him in what 
was called the Lombard League, and had founded 
the city of Alessandria in honor of it, calling it by 
the name of the Pope. Friedrich crossed the 
mountains to put down this rising, but the Lom- 
bards were stronger than he had expected, and in 
the midst of the struggle, at his greatest need, 
Heinrich the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, 
refused his help, probably because he did not like 
fighting against the Church, but declaring that he 



136 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

was too old for the campaign, though he was only 
forty-five, while the Emperor was fifty-four. 
Friedrich met him at Chiavenna, and actually knelt 
before him in entreaty not to ruin his cause by 
leaving him, but Heinrich, though distressed at 
the sight, held to his purpose, and rode off with 
his vassals. 

Without the Saxons, Friedrich had to fight a 
battle at Lugnano, where the Milanese standard 
again appeared in its car, and the Welfs gained a 
complete victory. Friedrich's horse was killed 
under him, and he was thought to be slain, so that 
the Empress Beatrice had put on mourning as a 
widow, before he appeared again at Pavia, having 
escaped on foot by by-paths. 

He was forced to make peace, and went to meet 
the Pope at Venice, where the Doge, in full pro- 
cession conducted him to St. Mark's Church, at the 
door of which Alexander awaited him with all the 
clergy. The Kaisar knelt to kiss the Pope's slip- 
per, and muttered in Latin (it is said), "Not to 
thee, but to Peter," which the Pope hearing an- 
swered with, " Both to me and to Peter." It is 
also said that Alexander then put Ms foot on Fried- 
rich's neck, quoting the promise — " Thou shalt go 
upon the lion and the adder;" but as another ac- 




FRIEDRICH KNEELING TO HEINRICH THE LION. 



Friedrich J., Barbarossa. 139 

count says he shed tears of joy at the reconciliation, 
it is not likely that these insults passed between 
them. The question was then finally settled that 
Bishops might be named by the prince, but that 
the cathedral clergy should have the power of ac- 
cepting or rejecting them, and that though their 
land may be held of the prince, their spiritual 
power comes only through the Church, and is 
quite independent of him. The Milanese were re- 
stored to their city, and Friedrich went home, going 
on his way to Aries, where he and Beatrice were 
together crowned King and Queen of Burgundy — 
namely, what is now called Provence — in 1178. 



«J& 



CHAPTER XIII. 

FRIEDRICH I., BARBAROSSA (contd.), 1174-1189. 

HE1NRICH YL, 1189-1197. 

WHEN Frieclrich I. came back to Germarry, 
he held a diet at Wurms, and summoned 
Heinrich the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, 
to answer for his treason, rebellion, and many other 
crimes. One of these was that in the middle of the 
night, in time of peace and friendship, he had at- 
tacked the town of Veringen, where the bishop of 
Freising had great salt works, destroyed them and 
all the storehouses, and dragged away the makers 
to Munich. 

The Duke would not come, saying it was his 
right to be judged only in his own country, so an- 
other diet was held at Magdeburg, but he would 

not come to that, nor to a third at Goslau, where 

140 



Friedrich /., Barbarossa. 141 

he was put under the ban of the empire — that is, 
made to forfeit his fiefs and honors, and declared 
an outlaw, for ban means a proclamation. He had 
friends, however, and held out for a long time, but 
he was so fierce and violent that he offended them 
all, and the Kaisar pushed him very hard, and be- 
sieged his city of Brunswick. There his wife, who 
was Matilda, daughter to King Henry II. of Eng- 
land, was lying ill. She ventured to send to Fried- 
rich to ask that some wine might be sent in for her 
use, and he answered that he had rather make her 
a present of Brunswick than disturb her. He was 
as good as his word, for he drew off his army, but 
he gained so much upon the Lion, that at last 
Heinrich came to the diet at Erfurt, fell on his 
knees before the Kaisar, and asked pardon 

Friedrich raised him kindly, but told him he had 
himself been the author of all his misfortunes. He 
was judged to have forfeited his great dukedoms, 
but the Kaisar allowed him to keep the Dukedoms 
of Brunswick and Luneburg, on condition that he 
should spend three years in exile at the court of 
his father-in-law, King Henry of England. Bruns- 
wick has ever since continued to belong to his fam- 
ily, the house of Welf or Guelf. Part of Saxony 
was given to Bernhard of Anhalt, the son of Al- 



142 Young Folks' History of Germany. ' 

breclit the Bear, in whose line it continued, and it 
is from these two houses of Brunswick and Saxony 
that our English royal family have sprung. Bava- 
ria was given to Friedrich's friend, Otto of Wit- 
telsbach. 

Now that peace was made, Friedrich held a great 
festival at Mainz, where he knighted his sons and 
held a tournament, to which came knights of all 
nations, forty thousand in number. A camp with 
tents of silk and gold was set up by the river-side, 
full of noble ladies who came to look on, and of 
minne-singers, who were to sing of the deeds of the 
knights. The songs and ballads then sung became 
famous, and there was much more of the spirit of 
poetry from this time forward in Germany. The 
Kaisar, old as he was, took his full share in the 
tilts and tournaments, and jousted as well or better 
than his three sons. 

Heinrich, the eldest of these sons, had already 
been chosen to succeed his father, and was the first 
prince who was called King of the Romans, while 
the Kaisar was alive. Friedrich planned a grand 
marriage for him. The Kings of Sicily, who were 
of Norman birth, had always been great friends of 
the Popes, and sheltered them when the Emperors 
drove them out of Rome, but the last of these, of 



Heinrich VI. 145 

the right line, had no child, and had only an aunt 
named Constance, who had always lived in a con- 
vent, though it does not seem certain whether she 
was really a nun. Friedrich used to say that Italy 
was like an eel, which must be held both by the 
head and tail if you would keep it. He had the 
head, and hoped the son would get hold of the tail 
by marrying Constance. Her nephew, the King, 
agreed to the match, and Constance, who was 
thirty-four years old, was sent to meet her bride- 
groom at Milan with a hundred and twenty mules 
carrying her marriage portion. The Pope, Urban 
III., was very angry, and deposed all the Bishops 
who had been at the marriage, or at Constance's 
coronation, and fresh struggles were just beginning, 
when all Europe was shocked by the news that 
Jerusalem had been taken by the Saracens under 
Saladin. 

The Pope and the Kaisar both laid aside their 
quarrels to do all they could to rescue the Holy 
City, and, old as he was, Friedrich prepared to go 
on the crusade. He took his two younger sons 
with him, and a great army, in which were Leopold, 
Duke of Austria, and Konrad, Markgraf or Mar- 
quess of Monserrat. Passing through Constanti- 
nople, they marched through Asia Minor, suffering 



146 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

much for want of food and water, but at Iconium, 
where with his uncle Konrad he had once suffered 
such a sore defeat, Friedrich, with his war-cry, 
"Christ reigns! Christ conquers!" so dashed on 
the enemy as to gain a glorious victory. But only 
a few days after, as he was bathing in the cold, 
swift river Kalykadmus, a chill struck him, and he 
sank into the rapid current. He was seventy years 
old when he was thus lost, in the year 1190. His 
body was found and buried at Antioch; but the 
Germans could not believe their mighty Kaisar was 
dead, and long thought that in the Kyffhauser 
cave in Thuringia he sat with all his knights round 
a stone table, his once red, but now white, beard 
growing through the stone, waiting till the ravens 
shall cease to fly round the mountain, and Ger- 
many's greatest need shall be come, when he will 
waken up, break forth, and deliver her. 

Friedrich's second son and namesake fought 
bravely, but soon caught the plague, and died when 
only twenty years of age. The Duke of Austria 
and Marquess of Monserrat joined the other body 
of crusaders, led by the Kings of France and Eng- 
land, at Acre, but Konrad was killed by an Eastern 
assassin, and Leopold was affronted by King Rich- 
ard wanting him to assist in building up the walls 



Konrad III. 149 

of Ascalon, and left Palestine. In the meantime, 
the King of the Romans, Heinrich VI., had been 
fighting hard with Heinrich the Lion, who had 
come home from England resolved to win back 
what he had lost, but all in vain. His son Heinrich 
had been betrothed to Agnes, daughter to the Pfalz- 
graf Konrad, brother to Friedrich I., and when the 
house of Welf was ruined, she would not give up 
her love to marry the King of France. Her mother 
favored her, and sent a message to the young Hein- 
rich to come to her castle in her husband's absence. 
He came in the disguise of a pilgrim, and the mother 
immediately caused them to be married. When 
her husband came home the next morning, she met 
him with — "My lord, a noble falcon came yester- 
day to your tower, whom I have taken ! " The 
two presented themselves, the Pfalzgraf forgave 
them, and thus peace was made, and the old Lion 
soon after died. 

Young Heinrich was thus able to interfere on 
behalf of his English uncle, Richard the Lion Heart, 
when he had been shipwrecked in the Adriatic on 
his way from the Holy Land, and while trying to 
pass through the Tyrol as a pilgrim had been 
seized and imprisoned by Leopold, and afterwards 
made over to the Kaisar. The Pope demanded the 



150 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

release of a crusader, whose person ought to have 
been sacred, and the Kaisar held a diet at Hagenau, 
at which Richard was called upon to defend him- 
self from the charge of having murdered Konrad 
of Monserrat, betrayed the cause, and other crimes. 




HEINRICH VI. 



Richard spoke with such grandeur and dignity that 
even Leopold turned aside weeping, and the Em- 
peror sprang from his throne and embraced him. 
After this his ransom was accepted, and he did 



Heiurich VI. 151 

homage to Heiurich VI. as Emperor of the West, 
receiving from him the promise of the kingdom of 
Aries to add to his duchy of Aquitaine. 

Heinrich took his wife into Sicily on the death of 
her cousin Tancred, and they were there crowned ; 
but he showed himself a harsh and cruel ruler, and 
very avaricious. He went back several times be- 
tween Sicily and Germany, and caused his little, 
son Friedrich to be elected King of the Romans, 
but he was everywhere hated. He was planning a 
war with the Eastern Emperor, when, after hunt- 
ing all day near Messina in the heat of August, he 
took a chill, and died at the age of thirty-one, in 
the year 1194. The Sicilians rejoiced publicly at 
the death of their tyrant, and murdered all the 
Germans they could find in the country. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PHILIP, 1198-1208. 

OTTO IV., 1209-1218. 

LITTLE Friedrich, the son of Heinrich VI., was 
only three years old. He had been chosen 
King of the Romans as soon as he was born, but the 
Welfs declared that the election of an unbaptized 
infant could not be good for anything, and that 
there must be a fresh choice. 

On hearing this, Philip, Duke of Swabia, the only 
surviving son of Barbarossa, left his sister-in-law 
Constance to secure Sicily and Apulia to herself and 
her child, and hurried back to the diet. There the 
Waiblings declared that it was no use to try to 
elect an infant, and that if Philip wished to keep 
the empire in his family he must be himself elected. 
He consented, and was chosen at Muhlhausen by 

the Waiblings, but the Welfs met at Koln and chose 

152 



.Philip. 153 

Otto, Duke of Brunswick, the son of Henry the 
Lion, and had him crowned at Aachen. Philip was 
crowned at Mainz, but only by the Savoyard Bishop 
of Tarentaise, and the same year the Empress Con- 
stance died when only forty-three years old, having 
had her little son Friedrich Roger crowned King of 
Sicily and Apulia, and placed him under the special 
protection of the Pope, whom she begged to become 
his guardian, and to watch over both his kingdoms 
and his education. 

The Pope at that time was Innocent III., a very 
great man, whose chief object was to make the 
power of the See of Rome felt by all prftices ; and 
as the first Norman conqueror had asked the Pope 
to grant the power over Sicily, he considered the 
kingdom a fief of the Roman See, and took charge 
of it and of the little king, whom the Normans 
called the Child of Apulia. 

Innocent at the same time thought it needful to 
pronounce between the three princes, who had all 
been chosen kings of the Romans — Friedrich, 
Philip, and Otto. He threw over the child's elec- 
tion at once, and likewise declared Philip's unlaw- 
ful, but he saw no objection to Otto's, and Otto 
promised his full support and faithfulness to Rome, 



154 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

and to give up possession of Countess Matilda's in- 
heritance. 

Germany thus was divided between the two kings 
till, in 1208, at the marriage festival of his niece 
Beatrice and Otto, Duke of Meran in the Tyrol, 
Philip was stabbed in the throat — no one knows 
why, unless it was the deed of a madman or drunk- 
ard — by the Bavarian Pfalzgraf, Otto of Wittels- 
bach. Philip left only two little daughters, whose 
mother died of the shock a few days after. The 
bridegroom, Otto of Meran, promised Beatrice 
never to rest till he had revenged her uncle's death, 
and Otto of Wittelsbach was hunted down among 
some shepherds as he was playing with a ram, and 
his head cut off. 

Otto of Brunswick offered himself for a second 
election, and gained it, promising to marry Philip's 
orphan daughter Beatrice, who at eleven years old 
was led into the diet, while Otto said — "Behold 
your queen ! Pay her due honors ! " and then 
committed her to the care of her sister Agnes, the 
Pfalzgrafin of the Rhine, while he went to Italy to 
be crowned, and to try to bring Lombardy to be at 
peace. 

It is said that Innocent III. wept for joy at hav- 
ing to crown a Welf Emperor, but the German 




MURDEit OF PHILIP. 



Otto IV. 157 

troops were unruly, helped themselves to whatever 
pleased them in the Roman shops, and at last a fight 
took place in the streets, in which many were killed 
on both sides. Also, when Innocent claimed the 
lands which Countess Matilda of Tuscany had left 
to the Church, the Kaisar refused to give them up 
according to his promises, and the quarrel having 
begun, he most unjustly laid claim to the kingdom 
of Sicily as having been cut off from the empire, 
and actually marched into the Abruzzi. 

Young Friedrich, the Pope's ward, defended him- 
self bravely in Sicily, and Innocent, justly angered 
at the grasping and faithlessness of Otto, excom- 
municated him, and called on all his subjects to re- 
nounce their allegiance. Otto was obliged to hurry 
back to Germany, where, to strengthen himself, he 
immediately married Beatrice of Hohenstaufen, but 
only a fortnight later the poor little bride was found 
dead, poisoned, it was supposed, by his enemies. 
Otto was always looked on as belonging to his 
uncles, the Kings of England, and thus Philip 
Augustus of France hated him as one of that race. 
Once, when a boy, Otto had been at Philip's court 
with his uncle Richard, who pointed him out to the 
King, saying that one day that boy might be Em- 
peror. Philip laughed scornfully, and said — 



158 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

" When that comes to pass, I will give him Orleans, 
Chartres, and Paris." When Otto was really 
Kaisar, he sent to put Philip in mind of his promise. 
Philip replied that Orleans, Chartres, and Paris 
were the names of three little puppies, now three 
old hounds which he sent to the Emperor ! At 
this time Philip was the friend and champion of 
Innocent III., while King John of England, Otto's 
uncle, was with his kingdom under the interdict, 
and Otto Avas felt to be following him in his mis- 
deeds, rather than acting as a Welf, faithful to the 
Pope. 

Therefore Friedrich was encouraged to make an 
attempt on Germany, and received the Pope's bless- 
ing and recommendation to the German nation, but 
only on condition that if he succeeded he should 
give up Apulia and Sicily, for the Popes did not 
choose to have the Emperors holding both ends of 
the eel of Italy. Though only eighteen, Friedrich 
was married to Constance of Aragon, and had a 
little son named Heinrich, whom he carried to be 
crowned at Palermo before he set off for Germany. 

He was welcomed by the Waiblingers in Lom- 
bardy, but he took no army with him, and climbed 
the passes of the Alps alone with a guide, so as to 
descend into his own duchy of Swabia, where the 



Otto IV. 161 

people were glad to see him. At Constance the 
gates were shut when Otto wanted to enter the 
city, and all the south of Germany soon owned the 
Apulian child, as Otto called him. He then went 
to France, and made a league with Philip Augus- 
tus, who gave him twenty thousand marks towards 
his expenses. He took the sum with him to Mainz, 
and when his chancellor, the Bishop of Speier, 
asked where he would have it kept, he answered — 
" Nowhere. It is to be given to our friends ; " and 
at Mainz all the Waiblinger chose him as King, and 
paid Mm homage. 

Otto was, however, still strong in Brunswick and 
Saxony, the old homes of his line, but he had mixed 
himself up in a fierce quarrel of the Duke of Bra- 
bant, the Count of Flanders, and the other border 
vassals, with Philip Augustus, and joined them in 
a great attack upon France. All France united 
against them, and in 1214 there was fought the 
terrible battle of Bouvines, in which Philip gained 
a complete victory. Otto was in great danger, alone 
among the enemy, when a French knight tried to 
cut him down with a battle-axe, missed him, but so 
wounded his horse that, mad with pain, it tore back 
with him to his own troops, and there fell dead. 
He was remounted, but he could not bring his 



162 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

troops back to the change, and was forced to ride 
off with them, Philip scornfully saying — " We shall 
see nothing more of him but his back," though in 
truth Philip was a much less brave man. Otto's 
power was broken, and he fled to Koln, where his 
second wife, Marie of Brabant, added to his troubles 
by gambling away vast sums at dice. Being unable 
to pay them, he rode away from a hunting party to 
Brunswick, and she followed as a pilgrim, and Koln 
opened its gates to Friedrich. 

Otto lived four years longer in Brunswick, and 
on his death-bed sent his crown by the hands of his 
brother Heinrich to Friedrich. He was then ab- 
solved from his long excommunication, and died in 
1218. He had no children, so that Brunswick and 
Luneburg went to his nephew Otto, the son of his 
brother Wilhelm, our Queen's ancestor. 



CHAPTER XV. 

FEIEDRICH II., 1218. 

"CfMEDRICH n., "the Apulian child," was a 
-*■ wonderfully able and brilliant man, brought 
up in all the old learning that was still kept up in 
the Italian cities by the greatest scholars of the 
world, and with all the fire and spirit of the House 
of Hohenstaufen, together with the keen wit of the 
Sicilian Normans. Bred in Palermo, he preferred 
Italy to Germany, and as soon as Otto was dead 
he set out to be crowned Kaisar at Rome, after 
having caused his young son Heinrich to be chosen 
as his successor. 

His wife Constance was dead, and the little cru- 
sading kingdom of Jerusalem had again fallen to a 
little girl, Yolande de Brienne, whom Friedrich 
married, undertaking, as King of Jerusalem, to 



164 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

lead a grand crusade to deliver the Holy City, 
which, was still held by the Saracens. 

The Pope, Honorius II., was not pleased with 
the marriage, and taxed Friedrich with breaking 
his promise of preventing Sicily from being in the 
same hands with Germany, since he had caused his 
only son to be elected to both ; but Friedrich an- 
swered that he would take care to settle that, and 
went on into Sicily, where he had hard work in 
dealing with his fierce barons, and likewise with a 
colony of Saracens who had settled in the moun- 
tains and on the sea-shore, and gave much trouble 
to his people by land and sea. Friedrich con- 
quered these Saracens, and moved them into the 
Apulian cities of Lucera and Nocera, treating them 
so kindly that he won their hearts, and they served 
him faithfully, but the Italians were angered by his 
bringing them among them. There was at this 
time much curious learning among the Saracens, 
especially in mathematics and chemistry. Fried- 
rich delighted in such studies, and this raised the 
report that he was half a Saracen himself. More- 
over, he was not leading the life of a good Chris- 
tian man, but was giving himself up to all sorts of 
vice and luxury at Palermo. The Pope urged him 



Friedrich II 165 

to begin his crusade, and he sent for his vassals 
from Germany to join him in it. 

Among them came the Markgraf Ludwig of 
Thuringia, a young man still, who had been mai- 
ried ever since he was a little child to Elizabeth, 
the daughter of the late King of Hungary. The? 
two children had been brought up together at the 
castle of the Wartburg, and loved each other dearly, 
though Ludwig' s mother, brother and sister hated 
and despised Elizabeth after her father* was dead, 
and tried to set Ludwig against her pious and 
saintly ways, calling her the gipsy because she was 
■dark complexioned, and the nun because of her 
prayers. Ludwig loved her through all, and up- 
held her in all her works of charity, when she 
nursed the sick, and laid them in her own bed, and 
fed orphan children, and went to the houses to feed 
the bedridden and dress their sores. There was a 
story that once, when he met her coming out of the 
castle with a heavy basket full of broken meat, he 
asked her what was there. She smiled, and bade 
him look, and it was full of roses. Perhaps this 
was meant to show how sweet are deeds of love, 
for Elizabeth never deceived him, nor did he find 
fault with her charities. Both were still very 
young when he was called to go on the crusada 



166 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

and great was his grief at parting with her and his 
little children. With him went the chief German 
minne-singer of the time, Walter of Vogelwiede, 
and great numbers of noble knights, but the force 
could not be collected quickly, and those who came 
first had to wait, in the full heat of the summer, at 
Otranto and Brindisi to embark, till sickness began 
among them, and when at last they did embark it 
only became worse. Luclwig of Thuringia saw 
white doves flying round his mast — the sure sign 
of death in his family — and died before the fleet 
turned back, as it was forced to do, the Kaisar 
himself being very ill. 

The Pope, Gregory IX., who knew Friedrich's 
proud character and evil, self-indulgent life, could 
not believe he had been in earnest about the cru- 
sade, and was too angry and impatient to inquire 
whether his illness was real or only an excuse, 
would not hear his messengers, and excommuni- 
cated him. Friedrich was very angry at the injus- 
tice, and it drove him further towards unbelief, 
and love of all the Church condemned, but he still 
went on with his crusade, though, before he sailed, 
his wife, Yolande of Jerusalem, died at the birth of 
her first child, who was christened Conrad. The 
Pope did not approve of this expedition being led 




FRIEDRICH II. PUTTING ON THE CROWN OF JERUSALEM. 



Friidrich II 169 

by one who was still excommunicate, and forbade 
the Knights Templars and Hospitallers to follow 
his standard ; but instead of fighting he made a 
treaty with Malek el Kameel, the Saracen Sultan, 
by which he made a ten years' truce, arranged that 
the pilgrimage to Jerusalem should be made safe, 
and that the Holy City should be put into his 
hands, with all its churches, the Moslems only 
keeping for themselves the Mosque of Omar, on 
the site of the old Temple. But the Pope's friends 
thought the treaty only a snare to get Christians 
into the hands of the Mahometans, and when 
Friedrich inarched to Jerusalem, the Holy City 
was laid under an interdict while he should be 
there. No Holy Communion, no Church services 
took place when he visited the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre, and he took the crown of Jerusalem off 
the altar, and crowned himself with it with his 
own hands. Then he came back to Italy, having 
learned in the East much of the old Greek learning 
which had passed to the Saracen Arabs, and, in 
especial, an Arabic translation of the Ethics of 
Aristotle, which was afterwards much studied in 
Europe. 

The Pope had in the meantime caused Jean de 
Brienne, the father of Friedrich's late wife, to raise 



170 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

an army, and seize Apulia and Sicily in the name 
of Ms infant grandson Konrad, to whom Friedrich 
was bound, the Pope said, to have delivered it up. 
His soldiers were called the Key-bearers, as being 
sent forth by the See of Rome, and bearing the 
Keys of St. Peter made in cloth on their shoulders ; 
but they were really only savage, plundering men- 
at-arms, and the people of the country all joined 
their Emperor gladly in expelling them. The 
Pope on this gave up his attempt, and peace was 
made between Mm and the Emperor, in winch 
Gregory declared that the treaty with the Sultan 
was the best that could have been made, and ab- 
solved Friedrich. 

The two had a conference at San Germano, but 
only one tiling is known, that was there settled. 
The Germans had formed an order of soldier monks 
like the Templars and Hospitallers for the defence 
of the Holy Sepulchre, but as there were jealousies 
between the three, Friedrich wished the Germans, 
who were called Teutonic Knights, to be removed 
from the Holy Land, and set to fight with the 
heathen Sclavomans in the lands near the Baltic 
called Borussia (near Russia) or Prussia. Their 
Grand Master, Herman von Salza, was made a 



Fviedrieh II. 171 

prince of the empire, and they were to have all the 
lands they conquered. 

Friedrich stayed on in Italy, attending to a uni- 
versity he had founded at Naples, to which he in- 
vited scholars from all parts, especially the famous 
Scotsman, Michael Scott, who translated into Latin 
his Arabic version of Aristotle, and was looked on 
by all the ignorant as a great magician. The 
greatest scholar who grew up at Naples was St. 
Thomas Aquinas, a most wonderful teacher, who 
turned Aristotle's arguments to teach Christian 
truth. Friedrich's court was full of learning, ele- 
gance, and poetry, but chiefly of a self-indulgent 
kind. He so loved minstrelsy that he gave the city 
of Orange, in his kingdom of Aries, to a troubadour. 
The minne-singer Walther of Vogelwiede died 
about this time, and left lands whose produce was 
to be given to feed his fellow-minstrels the birds at 
his tomb, that so there might always be their sweet 
music round him. 

It was a time of very great beauty in everything 
— poetry, dress, buildings, and all. One of the 
loveliest buildings in Germany is Marburg Cathe- 
dral, which was built by Konrad of Thuringia, 
brother of Ludwig, in memory of the " dear saint 
Elizabeth." When the news of Ludwig's death had 



172 Young Folks' History of Germany.- 

come home, Konrad and his mother had driven her 
out with her five babies, homeless and wandering, 
and seized the goverment, but the barons and 
knights restored her little son. The Emperor 
wished to marry her, but instead of listening to his 
messages she went into a convent, where her con- 
fessor made her use hard discipline with herself, and 
she died when only twenty-four years old. Then 
her brother-in-law repented, and built this exquisite 
church in memory of her. This was the time too 
when the two orders of friars founded by St. Francis 
and St. Dominic were trying to teach people to love 
the world and its delights less, and to turn all their 
learning to holiness and the love of God. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FRIEDRICH II., 1250.— Concluded. 

FRIEDRICH II. had been 15 years absent from 
Germany since he set out after his election at 
Mainz. His eldest son, Heinrich, who had been 
chosen King of the Romans in his infancy, was sent 
to reign in Germany, even as a mere child, under 
the care of Ludwig, Duke of Bavaria, but there was 
so much crime and misrule that in the Dukedom of 
Westphalia Bishop Engelbert revived a strange 
secret tribunal called the Vehmegericht of Vehm, 
which is said to have dated from ancient rites 
around the Irmansul. Members were sworn in 
secretly, and met at night. Judges were chosen 
from among them, and before them persons were 
tried for their crimes, and if found guilty were sure 
to be found hanging on trees, a dagger stuck be- 
neath, and the letters carved, S. S. G. G. (stock, 

stone, grass, green), the meaning of which no one 

173 



174 Young Folks' Hietory of Germany. 

knew. This Vehme was much dreaded, and did 
much good in keeping down evil-doers, when the 
regular courts of law were weak. 

As Heinrich grew up he became discontented, 
and thought Ms father ought to resign the empire 
to him, and only keep Sicily and Apulia. The 
Duke Ludwig of Bavaria Avas murdered while tak- 
ing an evening walk on the bridge of Kelheim, it is 
said, by an idiot, whom he had teased, but the 
young king declared that it was by one of the 
Eastern assassins sent by his father, and Friedrich 
and his people suspected Heinrich himself. 

So many complaints were sent to the Emperor 
that he summoned his son and the German princes 
to a diet at Ravenna, and there tried to set matters 
straight between them, intending to come back to 
Germany as soon as he had arranged the affairs of 
Lombardy, but before he could do so Heinrich 
broke out into open rebellion, assisted by his 
brother-in-law, Friedrich, Duke of Austria, and laid 
siege to Wurms. The Kaisar again crossed the 
Alps, and being joined by all the loyal Germans, 
soon crushed the rebellion, and forced Heinrich to 
come and ask pardon. This was at once granted, 
but the wretched young man was found to be 
trying to poison his father, and was therefore sent 



Friedrich II 177 

as a prisoner to Apulia, and was moved about from 
castle to castle there until his death. 

Friedrich remained in Germany, and took as his 
third wife, Isabel, the sister of Henry III. of Eng- 
land, sending a splendid embassy to betroth her, 
and going to receive her himself at Wurms, where 
they were married in presence of four kings and 
eleven dukes, all sovereign princes. The festivities 
are said to have been even more splendid than those 
at his grandfather's diet at Mainz, and her English 
attendants were infinitely amazed by the elephants 
and camels which Friedrich had brought from the 
East. 

Friedrich was called back to Italy by another 
disturbance in Lombardy, where the cities, with 
Milan at their head, had formed a league against 
him. He caused his son Konrad to be elected 
King of the Romans, and crossed the Alps with his 
army, and, being joined by all the Ghibellines in 
Northern Italy, he beat the Milanese at Corunuova. 
They hoped at least to have saved their beloved 
standard, but there had been heavy rain, the car 
stuck fast in a bog, and though they tried to carry 
off its gilt cross and ornaments, the Germans came 
too fast upon them, and they were forced to leave 
it in all its beauty. Friedrich had it drawn into 



178 



Young Folks' History of Germany. 



Rome in triumph by an elephant, and placed in the 
Capitol ; but the war was not ended, for Friedrich 
required the Lombards to submit without making 
any terms, and they chose rather to defend them- 
selves from city to city. 

They knew that the wishes of the Pope were for 
them, for the Pope was displeased at Konrad, the 
heir of Sicily, being made king of the Romans, so 
that the southern kingdom would be joined to the 
empire, contrary to the Emperor's promise. There 
was another younger son of Friedrich named Hein- 
rich, but called in German Heinz, and in Italian 
Enzio, a very handsome youth of twenty, whom 
Friedrich married to Adelais, the heiress of Sar- 
dinia, and made king of that island. But Sar- 
dinia had belonged to Countess Matilda, and Greg- 
ory declared it was part of the inheritance of the 
Church, and could not be given away. 

On the very Palm Sunday of 1239 that Friedrich 
was holding a great tournament at Padua, Gregory 
excommunicated him again, and accused him of 
having uttered a most horrid blasphemy. This he 
denied with all his might, sending in Ins confession 
of faith, which agreed with that of all the Christian 
Church, though there is no doubt that he had a 
careless, witty tongue. The Pope did not consider 



Friedrieh II. 179 

that lie had cleared himself, and tried to find an 
Emperor to set up against him ; but St. Louis of 
France did not think he was fairly treated, and 
would not let any French prince be stirred up to 
attack him. 

In the meantime things were going badly in Ger- 
many. Young Konrad was learning the German 
vice of hard drinking, and not making himself re- 
spected ; and a horrid Mogul tribe, like the Huns 
of old, were overrunning Germany, and doing ter- 
rible damage, till they were beaten on the banks of 
the Danube. This stopped them, and though they 
laid Hungary waste, they did not venture again into 
Germany. 

Gregory summoned a council of the Church of 
Rome to consider of the Emperor's conduct. The 
chancellor, Peter de Vineis, tried to persuade the 
German clergy not to go, telling them that at Rome 
they would find " broiling heat, putrid water, bad 
food, swarms of gnats, air so thick that they could 
grasp it, and a disgusting and ferocious race of men ; 
that the Pope would be too cunning for them, and 
that their lives, their goods, and their souls would 
all be in danger." A great many were stopped by 
this, and as to the rest, Friedrieh had a fleet on the 
Mediterranean, and had twenty-two shiploads of 



180 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Bishops and priests seized and carried to Naples, 
where it is said that he caused his chief foes among 
them to be put to death by hunger, and all were 
roughly handled and robbed, though the French and 
English were sent home in safety. 

Gregory IX., who was nearly a hundred years 
old, died soon after this failure ; the next Pope 
lived only seventeen days, and Innocent IV., who 
was next elected, though hitherto the Emperor's 
friend, could not but go on with the old policy of 
the Popes taking the part of the Lombard league, 
and trying to reduce the power of the Emperor. As 
Friedrich said, when he heard of the election, he 
had only lost a friend, for no Pope could be a Ghi- 
belline.* 

There was an attempt to make peace, but it only 
made the breach wider, and Innocent fled from 
Rome to Lyons, which did indeed belong to the 
empire, but was much more out of Friedrich's reach 
than Rome, and then he called another council, to 
which the bishops could come by land. There all 
the Emperor's offences Avere again brought up 
against him, and he was again excommunicated and 
deposed. When he heard of it he had all Ins crowns 

* Welfs and Waiblings in Germany, Guelfs and Ghibellines 
in Italy. 



Friedrich II. 181 

placed before him, and smiled as he said — " These 
are not lost, nor shall be till much blood has been 
shed." 

St. Louis tried to make peace, but in vain. A 
few Guelf bishops were persuaded to elect Heinrich 
of Thuringia, brother-in-law of St. Elizabeth, but he 
was defeated, and died of his wounds. Then 
Wilhelm, Count of Holland, was set up, Friedrich 
struggling all the time against the Guelfs, both in 
German}' and Italy, with the help of Enzio of Sar- 
dinia, and Manfred, the son of his last wife, Bianca 
di Sancia, and his favorite among all his children. 
But while he was ill at Capua, he was warned that 
his physician had been bribed by his chancellor, 
Peter de Vigni, whom he had always trusted, to 
poison him in a draught of medicine. He bade the 
doctor drink half before his eyes. The man stum- 
bled, and let most fall out of the cup. The rest 
was by Friedrich's orders given to a condemned 
criminal, who died of it at once. The chancellor 
was then imprisoned and blinded, and in the agony 
thus caused, dashed his head against the wall. 
Friedrich was bitterly grieved at such treachery in 
one whom he had so trusted. His son Enzio was 
made prisoner by the citizens of Bologna, who would 
not ransom him; and when St. Louis was taken 



182 Young Folks History of Germany. 

prisoner by the Sultan in Egypt, the Pope accused 
Frieclrich of having betrayed him. This accusation 
seems to have grieved Frieclrich more than anything 
that had gone before. He was an old man, his 
strength was worn out, and his last illness came on 
at Luceria. His son Manfred attended to him, and 
the Archbishop of Palermo absolved him, and gave 
him the last sacraments before his death on Christ- 
mas-day, 1250. He was a great and noble, but not 
a good man, though he would have been far better 
if those who ought to have cared for soul, had not 
cared for power more than for their duty. 




CHAPTER XVII. 

KONRAD IV 1250-1254 

WILHELM, 1254-1256. 

KICHAED, 1256-1257. 

KONRAD had already been crowned King of 
Germany as well as King of Apulia and Sic- 
ily, and his father had decreed that Manfred should 
act as viceroy of the latter countries, desiring also 
that any lands taken from the Papal See should go 
back to it. But Innocent IV. would not acknowl- 
edge Konrad, and gave all his support to Wilhelm 
of Holland as King of Germany ; while he made a 
present of Sicily and Apulia to little Edmund, the 
second son of Henry III. of England, undertaking 
to conquer it for him if the English would send 
him money. This they did, but Manfred was too 
strong for the Papal troops, and kept the kingdoms 
for his brother. 

Ivonracl was very nearly murdered in his bed at 

1S3 



184 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Regensburg, and the Count of Eberstein, who took 
his place while he escaped, was actually killed. 
He was a grasping, haughty man, not much liked, 
and he offended Manfred by harshness to his 
mother's relations. In a great battle at Oppen- 
hein Wilhelm gained the victory, and Konrad soon 
after died of a fever, when only five-and-twenty, in 
the year 1254. His wife was Elizabeth of Bavaria,, 
and she had one little son named Konrad, but who 
is generally called Conradin. She knew there was; 
no hope of getting any of the kingdoms of his 
family for him while he was still a child, so she 
took him to her father's court, and begged the 
Pope to adopt him, as Friedrich II. had been adopt- 
ed ; but Innocent would not accept any of the House 
of Swabia, and the Guelfs were all of the same 
mind. Enzio had tried to escape from prison, but 
a tress of his long golden hair caught in the lock of 
the door and betrayed him, so that he was pursued,, 
and brought back to die in captivity ; and Manfred, 
who was crowned King of Sicily and Apulia, was 
conquered and slain by Charles, Count of Anjou, 
to whom the Pope gave away the two kingdoms. 

Germany was in a most disturbed state, for Wil- 
helm was only half owned as King of the Romans. 
The most noted act of his life was the laying of the 



Conrad IV. 185 

first stone of the splendid Cathedral of Koln, but 
he was so much disliked that the men of Koln set 
the house where he was sleeping on fire, in hopes 
of destroying him ; and his own vassals, the Fries- 
landers, rose against him. It was winter, and he 
hoped to cross the ice to put them down, but as he 
was crossing a swamp the ice gave way under his 
horse's feet, and while he was struggling in the 
frozen mud, the Frieslanders came up and slew him 
without knowing him, in January, 1256. During 
all these wars the power of the King in Germany 
had been much lessened. The great dukes and 
prince bishops seized on one claim after another 
till, within their own lands, they became like kings 
and Friedrich II., by what was called a Pragmatic 
Sanction, had confirmed their rights, because he 
needed their help in his wars against the Pope and 
Lombard League. Also these princes had quite 
left off calling on any of the nobles or people to 
take part in choosing their king, and the seven chief 
among them always elected him. They were the 
three grand chancellors of the empire, being the 
Archbishops of Mainz, Koln, and Trier, with the 
King of Bohemia, grand cup-bearer ; the Duke of 
Bavaria, high steward ; the Duke of Saxony, grand 
marshal, and the Pfalzgraf of the Rhine. These 



186 Young Folks' History of Q-ermany. 

were called electors, in German Kiirfursten, and 
in the diet sat apart as a separate house or college. 
Not only had the princes and nobles grown 
powerful in the absence of the Emperor, but the 
cities had become very strong. Many of them had 
trades and manufactures, and they governed them- 
selves by their own town councils, training their 
men to arms, and fortifying themselves so as to be 
a match for the nobles. Those who owned no lord 
but the Kaisar called themselves free Imperial 
cities, and made leagues together to defend one 
another. The most famous of these leagues was 
called the Hansa — nobody quite knew why — and 
took in eighty towns, of which Lubeck and Ham- 
burg were among the chief. They had fleets and 
armies, made treaties, and were much respected. 
Every citizen in these cities was trained to work at 
a trade. First he was an apprentice, then a jour- 
neyman ; after that he was sent out for what was 
called his wander-year, to visit other towns and im- 
prove himself in his art, and on his return he might 
be sworn into the guild of his trade and be a mas- 
ter workman, who could be chosen to be a guild- 
master or burgomaster, and sit in the town council, 
which met in the beautiful Guild Hall or Rath-haus. 
The guilds formed trained bands, which went out 



Wilhelm. 187 

to war under the banner of their craft, and the 
widows and orphans of those who died young were 
well taken care of. These cities, too, built splen- 
did cathedrals, such as Ulm, Augsburg, Strasburg, 
and many more. In these cities there was some order 
during the evil days that followed Friedrich's death. 
When Wilhelm perished, Konrad of Hochstatten, 
Archbishop of Koln, advised the other electors to 
choose a rich prince who could give them great 
rewards, and yet who should have no lands within 
Germany, so that he could not be able to subdue 
them all, and keep them in check. The brother of 
Henry III. of England, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, 
was pointed out to him as the best person, having 
immense wealth from the tin mines of Cornwall, 
and being connected with the empire through his 
wife, Sancha of Provence. Richard, glad of the 
honor done him, sent thirty-two wagons, all filled 
with gold, to buy the votes of the electors; but 
Arnold of Isenberg, the Elector Archbishop of 
Trier, was jealous of his brother of Trier, and set 
up as a candidate Alfonso X., King of Castille, 
whose mother was daughter to the murdered King 
Philip of Hohenstaufen. At Frankfort, on the 13th 
of January, 1257, Richard was chosen King of the 
Romans by four electors, and on the 1st of April 



188 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Alfonso was chosen by three, and the two candi- 
dates agreed that the Pope should decide between 
them ; but he put off doing so year by year, and in 
the meantime both princes and towns grew more 
independent, and the cities in Italy ruled them- 
selves, and almost forgot that the Emperor was 
their master. 

Alfonso was called in his own country the Em- 
peror, but he never came to Germany. Richard 
did try to do something for his own cause, and 
spent vast sums in gifts to the Germans. He made 
three visits to Germany, and Avas crowned at 
Aachen, where he kept court till he had to go and 
aid his brother in his struggles with the English 
barons, and there was made prisoner at Lewes. 

In the meantime young Conradin had grown up 
to man's estate, and a party of Italians, Avho hated 
Charles of Anjou, invited him to come and win his 
father's crown. He set forth with his friend, Fried- 
rich of Austria, and an army of Swabians and Ba- 
varians. He was only twenty, very handsome, win- 
ning, and graceful, and all the Ghibelline Lombards 
joined him with delight. The Pope, Clement V., 
forbade him to proceed, and excommunicated him,, 
but remained at Viterbo, while Conradin was Avel- 
comed at Rome, and his path streAved with floAvers. 



Richard. 191 

Then he went on to Apulia, but Charles had 
already crushed his friends there, and in a terrible 
battle at Sarcola routed his army. Conradin and 
Friedrich rode off, and meant to renew the fight in 
Sicily, but they were betrayed to Charles by a 
noble whom they trusted. The King collected a 
court of judges, who at his bidding condemned the 
two young men to death as robbers. Only one of 
all was brave enough to declare that such a sen- 
tence would be a murder, and he was not heeded. 
The two friends were tried and condemned to death 
without a hearing, and were playing at chess when 
they were told they were to die the next day. 
They prepared with great firmness and tender affec- 
tion, and were taken to a scaffold on the sea-shore of 
the lovely Bay of Naples, in front of a church, Charles 
sitting at a window where he could see the execu- 
tion. The sentence was read, and Conradin spoke 
a few words, owning himself a sinner before God, 
but, in challenge of his innocence toward man, he 
threw down his glove among th.e people. With a 
commendation to his Father in heaven, and a cry 
of sorrow for his mother, he laid his head on the 
block and died, and Friedrich, bursting into tears 
for his friend, was executed the next moment. 
The cruel deed was done in 1266. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

RODOLF, . .*. 1218. 

r I "*HE German princes enjoyed the freedom 
■*- from all higher authority that arose from 
their having two absent foreign rival kings, but 
Germany was in a dreadful state of confusion, and 
bad customs sprang up which lasted for several 
centuries. Fist-right, which really meant the 
right of the strongest, was the only rule outside the 
cities, and even the bishops and great abbots were 
often fierce fighting men. The nobles lived in 
castles perched on rocks like eagles' nests, and 
often lived by plunder and robbery, and if two 
families had a quarrel, one chief sent the other a 
letter, called a feud-brief, giving a list of all the 
wrongs he considered himself or his people to have 
undergone, and defying the other and all his kin- 
dred, after which, each party was free to do the 

192 



Rodolf. 195 

other all the harm in his power. It was said that 
no noble cared to learn to write except to sign a 
feud-brief. 

All the learning and civilization that the great 
Saxon and Swabian Kaisars had brought in was 
passing away, except in the cities. The nobles 
were growing more of boors, and giving way to 
their great vice — drunkenness, and Germany was 
falling behind all other nations in everything praise- 
worthy. If an enemy had come against the coun- 
try it must have been overcome, and Ottokar, King 
of Bohemia, was so powerful as to be very danger- 
ous. So when Richard of England died in 1271, 
the Pope, Gregory X., finding that no king was 
chosen, sent the electors word that if they did not 
choose a king he should send them one. There- 
upon they chose Count Rodolf of Hapsburg. He 
was a good and brave man, whose possessions lay 
in Elsass, on the Swiss border, and had fought 
bravely under Ottokar against the Magyars of 
Hungary. He was very devout, and it was told of 
him that once when he was riding to Baden he met 
a priest on foot carrying the Holy Eucharist to a 
dying man over miry roads and torrents. He 
placed the priest on his steed and led him on his 
way, and when the sick man's house was reached, 



196 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

and the priest would have restored the horse, he 
said, " God forbid that I should ever again ride to 
battle the beast that hath carried the Body of my 
Lord," and he gave it to be used by priests going 
to visit the sick as long as it lived. 

After a battle in which he lost his horse, the man 
who had killed it was about to be put to death but, 
he saved him, saying, " I saw his courage. So 
brave a knight must not be put to death." 

Rodolf was fifty-five years old when he was 
chosen to be King of Germany, and a better choice 
could hardly have been made . When he was crowned 
at Aachen, no one knew what had become of the 
sceptre, but he took the crucifix from the Altar 
and made his oath upon it instead, saying that the 
symbol of redemption was a fit rod of justice. 
Gregory X. came to meet him at Lausanne, and 
kneeling before him, he promised obedience to the 
See of Rome, where he was to be crowned the next 
year. Ottokar, King of Bohemia, would not now 
even acknowledge him, and thought himself quite 
able to make himself independent. He had seized 
Austria when its Duke Friedrich died with Con- 
radin, had robbed the poor youth's mother of 
Styria and had bought Carinthia, all without sane- 



Rodolf. 19T 

tion from the Diet, and he was a terrible tyrant to 
all under him. 

All Germany took part against him, and he was 
obliged to give up Austria, Styria, and Carniola, 
and come to do homage for Bohemia and Moravia 
in the island of Labau on the Danube. While he, 
in splendid array, was kneeling before Rodolf in 
his old grey suit, the tent over them was suddenly 
taken away, and all the armies behind them. 
Ottokar thought this a great insult, and as soon as 
he could raise his troops again, began another war, 
and there was a terrible battle at Marchfield, near 
Vienna, where Rodolf gained a great victory, and 
cut the Bohemians to pieces. He tried to save 
Ottokar's life, but the corpse was found pierced 
with seventeen wounds. Ottokar's Queen sub- 
mitted, and his little son Wenzel remained King of 
Bohemia, but Austria, Styria, and Carniola were 
given by Rodolf to his sons Albrecht and Rodolf. 

Rodolf tried to revive the power of the Empire 
over Tuscany and Lombardy, but he found that 
he was not strong enough ; and rather than quarrel 
with the Pope, he gave up to Rome all that it had 
so long claimed of Countess Matilda's legacy. 
When he was asked why he did so, he said, " Rome 
is like the lion's den in the fable ; I see the footsteps 



198 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

of many animals who go thither, but of none who 
come back." 

He was very much beloved at home. He trav- 
eled ■ through Germany listening to every com- 
plaint. When his men would have kept some 
peasants from coming near him, he said, "For 
Heaven's sake let them alone. I was not made 
King to be shut up from mankind." He always 
lived and dressed plainly, and when he heard some 
of his knights grumbling at the badness of the rye 
bread and sour wine he was sharing with them, he 
dismissed them from his service as too dainty for 
him. 

At Mainz one winter morning he was walking 
about in his old grey dress, and turned in to a 
baker's shop to warm himself at the fire, but the 
woman crossly said, " Soldiers have no business in 
poor women's houses." " Be content, good woman," 
he said, "I am an old soldier, who have spent my 
all in the service of that fellow Roclolf, who still 
suffers me to want." " It serves you right," said 
the woman, and she began hotly to abuse the 
Kaisar, saying that she and all the bakers in the 
town were ruined by his means, and to get rid of 
him, she dashed a pail of water on the fire and 
smoked him out. When he sat down to his own 



Rodolf. 199 

dinner he ordered a boar's head and bottle of wine 
to be taken to the baker's wife as a present from 
the old soldier. Of course this brought in the 
woman, crying out for forgiveness, which he grant- 
ed her, but on condition that she would tell the 
company all she had said of him. And as he put 
an end to much extortion on the part of the tax- 
gatherers, and made the country peaceful, so that 
the peasants could safely sow and reap, no doubt 
the bakers soon had no reason to complain. He 
destroyed sixty-six nobles' castles in Thuringia 
alone, and hung twenty-nine nobles at once at 
Erfurt, and was equally severe to ill-doers every- 
where but not too severe, and the saying was, " He 
was the best warrior of his day ; he was the truest 
man that ever won the office of a judge." 

He had a large family, three sons and seven 
daughters, but one son was drowned, and the 
second, Rodolf, who was married to the daughter 
of King Ottokar, died in 1290, before the birth of 
his only child, Johann. After this, the Kaisar 
tried to have Albrecht, the only remaining son, 
chosen King of the Romans in his own lifetime, 
but the electors said they could not support two 
Kings at once, and put the matter off to another 
diet. Rodolf was seventy-four years old, and did 



200 



Young Folks' History of Germany, 



not live to see that promised diet, dying on the 15th 
of July, 1291, at Germesheim, on the Rhine. He 
had never been actually crowned by the Pope, but 
was generally called Kaisar. He was one of the 
best rulers Germany ever had, and was the founder 
of the House of Hapsburg in Austria. 




CHAPTER XIX. 

ADOLF, . . . . , 1291-1298. 

ALBRECHT, 1298. 

GERHARD, Archbishop Elector of Mainz, per- 
suaded the other electors to choose his kins- 
man, Adolf of Nassau, who is said to have been 
the poorest prince who ever sat on the throne of 
Germany. He was fierce and grasping, and made 
himself much hated. 

When Edward I. of England was going to war 
with France he made an alliance with Adolf and 
offered him a sum of money to equip an army to 
gain back the kingdom of Aries. But Adolf spent 
the money in buying Meissen and Thuringia from 
the Landgraf Albrecht, called the Degenerate, who 
had misused Ins wife, Margarethe, the daughter of 
Friedrich II., and taken her children from her. 
When she parted with them, instead of kissing the 

201 



202 Young Folks' History of Q-ermany. 

eldest, she gave him a fierce bite on the cheek, that 
the scar might always remind him of her wrongs. 
The two boys tried to flee from their father, but 
were- taken, and would have been starved in prison 
if the servants had not had pity on them, fed them, 
and set them free. 

They soon found friends to reclaim the inherit- 
ance which their father had sold, arycl half Germany 
joined them, for Adolf's hired soldiers were de- 
testably cruel. Once thejr caught two poor women, 
tarred them all over, rolled them in feathers, and 
showed them off in the camp as a couple of strange 
birds, and when the Count of Hohenstaufen com- 
plained to the King, he was rudely driven away. 
The two brothers were beaten in battle, but they 
kept their own inheritance, for the Thuringians de- 
fended themselves bravely for three years, and at 
the end of that time, Archbishop Gerhard was so 
ashamed of Adolf as to persuade the other electors 
that he had justly forfeited the Empire, and they 
chose Albrecht of Hapsburg, Duke of Austria, the 
son of the good Rodolf, in his stead. 

There was a great battle near Wurms between 
Albrecht and Adolf. One history says that they 
met, and that Adolf cried, " Here you shall abandon 
to me Empire and life," to which Albrecht answered, 



Albrecht. 203 

"Both are in the hands of God," giving him such a 
blow that he fell from his horse and was killed by 
some of the Austrians. His knights were so heavily 
armed that when once their horses were killed they 
could not get up but lay helpless, till some one came 
either to stab them or put them to ransom. This 
was in 1298. 

Albrecht was elected over again and crowned at 
Aachen. He was very tall and grim-looking, and 
made the more frightful by the loss of an eye. His 
great desire was to use his power over the Empire 
to make his family great, and on the death of Wen- 
zel, the last of the line of Bohemian kings, he 
obtained that his son Rodolf should be chosen to 
succeed him. Rodolf would not have been a bad 
ruler left to himself, but his father forced him to be 
so harsh that the Czechs rebelled, and when he died 
in the midst of the war with them, they declared 
they would rather have a peasant for their king 
than his next brother Friedrich, and chose Heinrich 
of Carinthia, the husband of the late King's sister. 

Albrecht did one good thing, in forcing the Arch- 
bishop Elector of Mainz and the Pfalzgraf to lower 
the very heavy tolls they took from every one who 
sailed along the Rhine. Archbishop Gerhard, who 
viewed himself as a sort of king-maker, said he had 



204 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

only to blow his horn to call up as many Kaisars as 
he pleased ; but Albrecht was too strong for him, 
and the Pope would not help him. 

Next Albrecht attacked the Landgraf of Thur- 
ingia, Friedrich with the bitten cheek. Tidings 
came to the Wartburg that the King was coming 
with a large army, and the young Landgraf had to 
flee with his wife and their newly-born child. The 
little one began to cry violently when the enemy 
were almost overtaking them, and the Landgraf 
made his little troop stop, and kept the enemy at 
bay while his baby was fed and pacified. He was a 
giant in size and strength, as is shown by the suit 
of armor still preserved at the Wartburg, and his 
skill proved sufficient to drive out the Austrians, 
and save his inheritance. 

Another attempt of Albrecht was to use his 
power as King of the Romans to make the mountain- 
eers of Switzerland subject to his own dukedom of 
Austria. The three little cantons of Uri, Schwitz, 
and Unterwalden were bitterly grieved by the 
harshness of his governor, Gesler, who lived at Alt- 
dorf, in a castle which he called Zwing Uri (Force 
Uri), and three men, Furst, Melchtal, and Werner, 
met at night and swore to raise the country against 
the tyrants, each gaining secretly as many con- 



Albrecht. 205 

federates as he could. According to the cherished 
Swiss story,- the outbreak was brought on at last by 
Gesler's setting up his hat in the market-place at 
Altdorf, and insisting that all the peasants should 
make obeisance to it. When Wilhelm Tell, the 
best archer of Uri, passed it unheeding, he was 
seized and made to ransom his life by shooting an 
apple placed on his little son's head. He succeeded, 
but on being asked why he had another arrow in 
his belt, he answered that had he slain his child, he 
should have used it to pierce the bailiff's heart. 
Gesler in his rage declared that he should be placed 
where he would never see the sun or moon again, 
and was carrying him off in a boat across the Lake 
of Lucerne, when a tempest made it needful to un- 
bind the only steersman who could save the lives of 
the crew. Tell brought the boat to shore, and then 
leaped ashore and fled. Watching his opportunity 
from behind a hollow tree, as the officers came in 
persuit of him, he shot Gesler dead, then rushed 
away to his comrades, who at once broke forth, 
seized several castles by surprise, pulled down 
Zwing Uri, and on the 6th of January, 1308, raised 
the banner of the Swiss Confederation, and prepared 
for defence. 

The rising is certain, but great doubts exist as to 



206 Young Folks'' History of Germany. 

the story of Tell, which is found in no chronicle of 
the time, and which historical critics now declare 
to be an old story like that of Siegfried and the 
dragon at Wurms, only placed at a later time. 

-Albrecht swore to be revenged, on the Swiss 
boors, and was collecting his forces when his 
nephew, Johann, the son of his brother Rodolf, 
came, as he had often done before, to demand pos- 
session of his father's inheritance, as he was now 
nineteen years old. Albrecht scoffingly threw him 
a wreath of flowers, saying those were the fit toys 
for his age. Johann vowed vengeance, and ar- 
ranged his plan with four nobles whom Albrecht 
had offended. The king was on his way to Rhein- 
felden, and was in sight of the Castle of Hapsburg, 
when he had to be ferried over the river Reuss. 
Johann and his party managed to cross in the first 
boat with him, leaving the rest of his train on the 
other side of the river. Then, crying, " Wilt thou 
now restore my inheritance ? " Johann stabbed 
Mm in the neck, and three of the others also struck ; 
then all fled, and left him dying, with Ms head in 
the lap of a poor woman. They took refuge in 
Switzerland, but the confederates would have noth- 
ing to do with murderers, and the four nobles were 
given up to justice. The King's family insisted on 



Albrecht. 207 

their punishment being that most cruel one of being 
broken on the wheel. The one of the party who 
had not struck Albrecht, Rudolf von der Wart, 
shared the same horrid death, but was comforted 
and tended through all the long anguish by his 
faithful wife Gertrude. Johann the Parricide, as 
he was called, struck with remorse, after long 
wandering, came to the Pope, who gave him ab- 
solution, and he ended his life in a convent. Al- 
brecht was killed in 1308. 




CHAPTER XX. 

HEINKICH VII., 1308-1313. 

LUDWIG V., 1313-1347. 

AT the time of Albrecht's death, Philip the 
Fair of France had forced Pope Clement V. 
to come to live at Avignon, and do his bidding in 
everything. Philip made Clement command the 
Electors to choose Charles, Count of Valois, his 
own brother, but they would not hear of another 
stranger. Nor would they hear of another king of 
the house of Hapsburg, but chose instead Heinrich, 
Count of Liitzenburg, the little castle, more com- 
monly called Luxemburg, who was brother to the 
Archbishop of Trier. 

He had never thought of becoming King of the 
Romans, and was much amazed when the tidings 
reached him, but he set himself to fulfil his duties, 
and was one of the best men who wore the crown 
of Karl the Great. The four sons of Albrecht 



Heinrich VII. 209 

came to ask investiture of their father's hereditary 
dominions, and he advised them not to meddle 
with Austria, which, he said, had been fatal to five 
kings. They in return advised him not to be the 
sixth king to whom it should be fatal, and he ended 
by giving it to Friedrich, the eldest of them, on 
condition that Switzerland should be declared in- 
dependent of the duchy, and that they should assist 
him in his plans as to Bohemia and Italy. 

Heinrich of Carinthia had turned out a cruel 
tyrant, and the Czechs hated him. He had shut 
up Elizabeth, the sister of Wenzel, the last king of 
Bohemia, in a castle, whence they had delivered 
her, and then offered her to the King of the 
Romans for his son Johann. He easily drove out 
the Carinthian, and the marriage took place when 
the lady was twenty-two and her bridegroom four- 
teen. She was a wild, rough, uncivilized being, and, 
Johann, who was a gentle, graceful, knightly 
prince, never was happy with her, and often left 
her to rule her own kingdom, while he joined any 
warlike enterprise that might be afoot. 

Heinrich was resolved to restore the old power 
of the empire in Italy, and to free Rome from the 
interference of the French. In 1310 he crossed the 
Alps, and took the cities of Lombardy that tried to 



210 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

hold out against him, then went on to Rome, where 
he found the city divided between two factions, 
one who held for him, the other who were in the 




MEDIAEVAL COSTUMES. 



interest of the French, and had hoped to keep him 
out by the help of the French King's cousin, 



Heinrich VII 211 

Robert, King of Naples. Heinrich, however, 
gained the Capitol, the Colosseum, and the Church 
of St. John at the Lateran Gate, but he was re- 
pulsed from the Vatican and from St. Peter's. 
The Pope had been obliged to send three Cardinals 
with a commission to crown him, and this was done 
at the Church of St. John, but the enemy actually 
shot arrows into the choir, which fell on the altar 
while the Kaisar was kneeling before it. He soon 
after took his troops to Tivoli, to avoid the un- 
wholesome summer air in Rome. Pie shewed much 
justice and wisdom, and the best Italians began to 
look on him as a perfect head to the State, such as 
they had always hoped for. He was going to in- 
vade Naples, because King Robert stirred up all 
the Guelfs in Italy against him, when he died sud- 
denly on the 24th of August, 1313. One account 
says that a priest actually poisoned him with the 
sacred Chalice, of which Emperors partook in right 
of their consecration, and that, when he discovered 
what had been done, he said, "In the Cup of Life 
thou hast offered me death ; fly before my people 
can take thee," and that his reverence for the holy 
Elements prevented him from using any means of 
saving his life. His grandson, however, declared 
that he did not believe the story. Any way, Ger- 



212 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

many and the Italian Ghibellines had a great loss 
in the good Kaisar Heinrieh VII. 

The electors met at Frankfort, each with an 
army of knights to support his choice. Five, with 
Johann of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, at their 
head, chose Ludwig, Duke of Bavaria, whose 
mother was a daughter of Rodolf of Hapsburg, and 
the other two, Friedrich, Duke of Austria, son to 
his eldest son. Ludwig was crowned at Aachen, 
and Friedrich at Koln. Ludwig held most of the 
north, Friedrich most of the south. Neither could 
concern himself about Italy at all, and Germany 
fell back into horrid misrule and disorder, earth- 
quake, famine, and pestilence making the distress 
much more dreadful. The Swiss, too, beat the 
Austrians in a terrible battle at Morgarten. 

At last the two cousins fought a dreadful battle 
at Muhlclorf in 1322. Friedrich thought the vic- 
tory was his, when he saw a fresh force advancing, 
and supposed that it was a body of men led by his 
brother Leopold prepared to rejoice with him, but 
it proved to be a Bavarian troop, under one Sifred 
Schwepperman, who came suddenly down on the 
tired Austrians, mowing them down like grass. 
One family lost twenty-three members. Ludwig, 
who had thought himself beaten, was amazed when 



Ludivig V. 



213 



first young Heinrich of Hapsburg was brought to 
him as a prisoner, then the Duke of Lorraine, then 
Friedrich himself. 
That evening the 
steward came to 
say that he had 
nothing for the 
King's supper but 
eggs, and very few 
of them. "An egg 
a-piece," said Lud- 
wig, "and two for 
faithful Schwep- 
perman. If I sleep 
in my camp to- 
night, it is owing 
toSifred!" These 
words were graven 
on Sifred's tomb, 
and an egg was 
blazoned on the 
family shield. 

Ludwig received Friedrich with the words, " Sir 
cousin, you are welcome," and sent him to the 
Castle of Trausnitz, his brother Leopold still trying 
to maintain his cause. Pope John the XXIL, still 




HEINRICH VII. 



214 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

in Avignon, laid Germany under an interdict be- 
cause Luclwig had been made King of the Romans 
without his sanction, but the Franciscan friars were 
on Ludwig's side, and continued to minister to the 
people. After three years, Ludwig came to visit 
Friedrich in his prison, and reminding him of their 
near relationship, proposed that the} r should reign 
jointly, both being called Kings of the Romans, 
and their signatures changing places every day. 
This was agreed to, and though the Pope dissolved 
the treaty, the two cousins held faithfully to it, but 
it did not save the life of Friedrich's brother Leo- 
pold, who had been pining to death ever since the 
battle of Muhklorf, grieving for not having come 
up in time. 

Ludwig entered Italy, was crowned at Pavia 
with the iron crown, and set up a Pope of his own, 
who crowned him at Rome. Friedrich died in 
1330, and Ludwig, as the only Kaisar, held a great 
diet at Reuse on the Rhine, where the princes de- 
clared the Roman Emperor to be the highest power 
on earth, and to be chosen only by the Electoral 
princes of Germany. 

This became the law of the land, and Ludwig 
seems to have thought himself head of spiritual 
matters as well as temporal, for he dissolved the 



Ludivig V. 



215 



marriage of Margarethe Maultasch, or Wide-mouth, 
the heiress of the Tirol, with the seeond son of 
King Johann of Bohemia, and gave her to his own 
second son, Ludwig, whom he had made Markgraf 
of Brandenburg. This deed made good men, who 
had hitherto thought him hardly used, turn against 
him, and they were 
also jealous when 
he made another 
son, named Wil- 
helm, Count of 
Holland. He wav- 
ered too in his al- 
liance with Ed- 
ward III. of Eng- 
land, at one time 
making him his 
Vicar in the Low 
Countries, and then 
turning against 
him. 

The electors met 
in 1344, and chose 
a new King of the 
Romans, Karl of 
Luxemburg, the 




216 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

eldest son of King Johann of Bohemia, and grand- 
son to Heinrich, but the greater part of the country 
adhered to Ludwig, and in truth Karl was more 
French than German. His name was really Wen- 
zel, but he had been sent in his youth to the court 
of his aunt, the wife of Charles IV. of France, who 
had given him his name, which is Karl in Germany, 
and his sister Gutha, or Bonne, as the French called 
her, was married to Jean, the heir of France. His 
election at first only turned the Germans against 
him, and he and his father, now blind, both left the 
country, and fought under the French standard 
against Edward III. at Crecy, where Johann was 
killed, and Karl fled from the field. 

The next year, 1347, Ludwig of Bavaria died 
suddenly in the middle of a bear hunt. 



CHAPTER XXL 

GUNTHER, 1347-1347. 

KARL IV., 1347-1378. 

TV"ARL IV. was looked on in Germany as 
-*■ ^ almost a Frenchman, and some of the Elec- 
tors chose Count Gunther of Schwartzenburg in 
his stead. Gunther was a good old man and much 
respected, but he died immediately after his election, 
and it was thought that he had been poisoned. 
After attending his funeral in full state, Karl was 
crowned at Aachen. 

The Pope much wished to get back to Rome 
from Avignon, but was afraid of getting under the 
power of Germany as he was now under that of 
France, so he very cautiously treated with Karl. 
A commission was sent to crown the Emperor at 
Rome, but only on his promise to stay there no 
longer than for one month, without arms or army: 

217 



218 Young Folks' History of Crermany. 

a promise which the Ghibellines thought unworthy 
of one who called himself the Roman Emperor. 

Karl was said to be the father of Bohemia, his 
hereditary kingdom, but the step-father of Ger- 
many. He sold the crown lands, and he also sold 
titles and honors to the nobles, thus greatly weak- 
ening future Kaisars, and adding to the power and 
lawlessness of the counts and barons, who heeded 
him little. Besides, the empire was visited hy the 
Black Death, the horrible disease that raged all 
over Europe, and was specially dreadful in Ger- 
many, where whole villages were left without 
an inhabitant, and even the cats, dogs, and pigs died. 
People treated this visitation in different ways. 
One set declared it was owing to the Jews, and 
persecuted them frightfully, 2000 of them being 
burned in one pile in Strasburg alone. Others 
more lightly thought that the pestilence was a 
visitation for the sins of Christians, but supposed 
that penitence might best be shown b}>- scourging 
themselves. An order called Flagellants was 
formed for the purpose, and men and boys, stripped 
to the waist, went through the streets in the towns 
singing litanies, while each beat the man in front of 
him with rods or scourges till he was streaming 
with blood. The wisest people were the women, 



Karl IV. 219 

chiefly in Flanders, who banded together, under 
the name of Be*guines, to nurse and tend the sick. 

In 1356 Karl held a great diet at Nuremburg, at 
which was drawn up the Edict that was called the 
Golden Bull, from the golden ball or bubble in 
which its seal is enclosed. It is a very noted doc- 
ument, for it fixed the constitution of the Kingdom 
of Germany and of the Holy Roman Empire, 
making seven Electors, three spiritual and four 
temporal, and declaring that each in his own prov- 
ince should be a sovereign prince, with no appeal 
from Ins decisions, except to the Kaisar himself. 
The three spiritual Electors were the Archbishops 
of Mainz, Koln, and Trier ; the four temporal were 
the King of Bohemia, the Margraf of Brandenburg, 
the Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, and the Duke of 
Saxony. It was published in the presence of the 
Emperor on Ins throne, and the next year another 
diet was held at Mainz, at which each Elector was 
present, and feasted in the market-place, each in 
character with the office he bore in the Imperial 
household, the three Archbishops each with a seal 
hanging round his neck as Arch Chancellors, the 
Duke of Saxony with a silver peck of oats as 
Master of the Horse, the Markgraf of Brandenburg 
with a basin and ewer of gold as grand seneschal ; 



220 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

the Emperor's nephew, Wenzel, representing the 
Bohemian king as grand butler, brought wine in a 
golden flagon, and the Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, the 
grand carver, served up the dishes. After the ban- 
quet, the Margraf of Misnia and the Count of 
Schwartzenburg, as grand huntsmen, sounded their 
horns, called up their hounds, and killed a bear 
and a stag in presence of the Emperor. At this 
diet was present Charles, the Kaisar's nephew, 
and heir of France, who had just become Count 
Dauphin of Vienne, and was thus a vassal of the 
empire. 

This Emperor founded the first German uni- 
versity at Prague, and further did all he could to 
adorn that city, and he was the first to discover the 
properties of the waters of Carlsbad, which still 
bears his name ; but he cared little for Germany, 
and bands of robbers were again infesting the whole 
country, and the Barons who held direct of the 
empire, without any Duke or Count over them, were 
especially violent and ferocious, making their castles 
on the mountain tops a terror to all around. 

Karl, however, cared most for French and Italian 
affairs. A new Pope, Urban V., was resolved to 
return to Rome, and he had a warlike Cardinal, 
named Egidio Albornoz, who prepared his way by 



Karl IV. 221 

making the people submit to liim. The Emperor 
met the Pope at Avignon, and was crowned by him 
King of Aries, before going to Lombardy, where the 
cities had grown so much used to governing them- 
selves that feAv made him welcome, and those who 
did found him weak and treacherous, and ready to 
do anything, grant any favor, or break any prom- 
ise, provided he was bribed. 

However, when Urban arrived at Rome, Karl 
met liim at the gates, and walked by his side on 
foot, leading his horse. When the Pope said Mass 
he served as a deacon, and he caused liis fourth wife, 
Elizabeth of Stettin, to be crowned at Rome, after 
which he stayed four months in Tuscany, chiefly at 
Lucca, trying what he could get from the Italian 
cities; and the families Avho were trying to become 
their lords. 

Urban was obliged to return to Avignon, and 
there died ; but the next Pope, Gregory XL, really 
came back to Rome, though the Cardinals had come 
to dislike the city so much that six of them stayed 
behind at Avignon. When Gregory died in 1378, 
some of the Cardinals chose Urban VI., an Italian, 
who could be trusted to live at Rome, but some 
who longed to be back at Avignon declared that 
they had only done so because the Roman mob had 



222 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

been shouting round them, " A Roman, a Roman." 
The}' fled away, and chose a Pope of their own who 
would live at Avignon, and thus began the great 




schism which did much harm to the Church. Eng- 
land and Germany held with the Roman Pope, 
France with the Avignon Pope. 



Karl IV. 



223 



In that same year, 1378, Karl IV. died. He was 
a clever man, who knew many languages, and ruled 
Bohemia well, but he was careless of Germany, and 
used Italy as a mere treasure-house. By much brib- 
ery he had managed to get his eldest son, Wenzel, 
chosen King of the Romans two years before his 
death, and he had persuaded his brother to make 
him heir also to Luxemburg. He had another son 
named Siegmund, and his daughter Anne was our 
" good Queen Anne," the much-loved wife of 
Richard II. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

WENZEL, 1078-1400. 

WENZEL or Wenceslaf of Luxemburg, King 
of Bohemia, had been chosen King of the 
Romans, and succeeded his father at seventeen. 
He was a man of rude and coarse nature, more like 
one of the half-crazed Roman Emperors than any 
( Christian ruler in the strange, wild cruelties he com- 
mitted. He left Germany to itself, and the dis- 
orders there grew so great that the cities, and the 
better sort of nobles in Swabia, formed themselves 
into a great league for defending one another and 
keeping order, sometimes attacking and taking rob- 
bers in their castles, and having them put to death. 
In truth, the king had now so little power in Ger- 
many that his ferocity could not do much mischief 
there. When he sent to the citizens of Rothem- 

burg for a contribution of 4000 florins, and they 

224 



Wenzel. 225 

refused, all the harm he could do them was to an- 
swer them in this letter, which is still preserved : 

" To our unfaithful men of Rothemburg, who are 
disobedient to the Empire. 

" The devil began to shear a hog, and spake thus, 
' Great cry and little wool.' Rex." 

But at his own Court at Prague he could show 
what he was. He invited the Czech nobles to an 
entertainment, where they found three tents pitched, 
black, white, and red. Wenzel himself was in the 
black tent, and as each came in, demanded of him 
what crown lands he held. If the noble said he was 
willing to yield them up, he was taken to the white 
tent, where he found a sumptuous banquet ; but if 
he declared that he had a right to them, he was 
hurried off to the red tent and beheaded. 

At the next entertainment he gave, before his 
guests sat down, he showed them the executioner 
leaning on his axe, and said to that grim personage, 
" Wait awhile, thou shalt have work enough after 
dinner." The nobles were not slow to take the 
hint, and Wenzel got whatever he chose to demand 
of them. 

His wife must have had a miserable life, for he 
kept a pack of bloodhounds always about him at 
table and in bed. where she was often torn bv them. 



226 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

This unfortunate lady was Joliann of Bavaria, and 
she had a confessor named Johann Nepomuk, who 
led her to become very pious and devout, and could 
sometimes even restrain the King himself. Once, 
however, when a fowl had been served up under- 
done, Wenzel ordered the unhappy cook to be 
fastened to a spit and roasted before the fire. Ne- 
pomuk threw himself before him, and used every 
means to make him change his horrible sentence, 
but in vain. He was only ordered off to prison, 
and kept there for several days, after which he was 
sent to the palace, invited to dinner with the King, 
and treated with great honor. But when Wenzel 
was alone with him, he found that it was to make 
him tell what the Queen said to him in confession, 
and this, as a good priest, he could not do. The 
King finding persuasion and promises in vain, had 
him tortured, and as he still refused, he was 
thrown bound hand and foot into the Moldau in the 
middle of the night, from the bridge which still 
bears his name ; but his corpse floated up, and was 
carried to the Cathedral, the clergy and people 
flocking to see and touch it, as that of a saint and 
martyr. 

Wenzel's chief favorite was his executioner, 
whom he used to call " Gossip." He declared that 



Wenzel. 229 

he wanted to know what a man felt when he was 
beheaded, so he told the executioner to bind his 
eyes, laid his head on the block, and cried, " Strike." 
The man did so, but only with the flat of the sword. 
The King started up, ordered him to lay down Ins 
head in his turn, caught the sword up, and actually 
cut off his head ! 

His brother Siegmund, whom his father had 
made Elector of Brandenburg on the failure of the 
old line, and who had been married to the daughter 
of the King of Hungary, chosen by the Magyars as 
their king, was asked by the Czechs what to do with 
this dreadful madman. He advised them to keep 
him as a prisoner, and they shut him up in a castle 
at Prague. After some months, one day, when he 
was allowed to bathe in the Moldau, he managed 
to make his escape in a boat rowed by a young girl, 
and reaching one of his castles on the other side of 
the river, took up arms against the people. His 
brother Siegmund was called in, and coining with 
an army, made him prisoner again, and sent him to 
Vienna. There he was shut up in one of the 
towers of the castle, from the window of which he 
saw an old fisherman named Grundler giving alms, 
whenever he could, to the prisoners in the court. 
Wenzel called him, and so talked him over that he 



230 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

brought a silken cord, by means of which the King 
let himself down from the tower to a boat on the 
Danube, where Grundler was waiting to row him 
across. He reached Prague, and there set up his 
banner again, got back his kingdom, and rewarded 
Grundler by making him a noble. 

In the meantime another attempt had been made 
by Duke Leopold of Austria to subdue the Swiss. 
He came with an army of 4000 knights against the 
peasants, who only mustered 1400 men, many of 
them Avith shields of wood, and clubs with spikes 
round their heads, which they called morning- 
stars. A knight called Hans of Hasenburg (Hare 
Castle) begged the Duke not to fight till his infan- 
try should have come up, but another knight cried, 
" Hare Castle ! Hare Heart rather ! I'll serve 
these fellows up to-night to the Duke, boiled or 
roasted, Avhichever he likes best." 

The Austrians, who had sent their horses away 
because the ground was rough, drew up on foot at 
Sempach like one steel wall bristling with spears. 
The peasants knelt for a moment in prayer, and then 
an Unterwalden farmer, Arnold von Winkelried, 
shouted, "I will make a way for you, comrades. 
Take care of my wife and children." Therewith 
he dashed against the spears, grasped as many as 



Wenzel. 



231 



he could in his arms, and pressing them all against 
his breast, held them there in the clasp of death, 
while the Swiss pressed into the gap he made, over 
his body, and broke 
the German ranks. 
Terror seized the 
army ; they fled, all 
but the few braver 
ones, who fought 
hard and desperate- 
1 y . The Duke 
was among them, 
and was killed at 
last as he lay 
wounded on the 
ground by a hump- 
backed plunderer, 
who was hung by 
the Swiss for the 
cowardly murder. 
Wenzel had by this 
time grown entire- 
ly unbearable, and wenzel. 
in 1400 a diet was held at Laenstein, winch de- 
posed him and elected Friedrich of Brunswick ; 
but on the way to Frankfort to be crowned the 




232 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

new King was treacherously murdered by the 
Count of Waldeck. Then the Electors chose the 
Pfalzgraf Ruprecht of the Rhine, and Wenzel said 
he was very glad to hear of his own deposition, 
since he should have more time to attend to his 
own kingdom. He behaved much better during 
the nineteen years he survived, and took much in- 
terest in the University at Prague, where Johann 
Huss was the Professor of Philosophy, and taught 
the doctrines of Wickliffe, which had been brought 
from England by a noble in the suite of Queen 
Anne. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

RUPEECHT, 1400-1410. 

JOBST, 1410-1411. 

SIEGMUND, 1411. 

RUPRECHT of the Rhine was a good and 
able man, but there was still a party who 
made the existence of Wenzel an excuse for obey- 
ing nobody, and the new King was not strong 
enough to force them to obey him. He tried to 
interfere in the affairs of Italy, which was in a 
state of great disorder, but he was defeated at 
Brescia, where the Duke of Austria was made 
prisoner, and this battle was the last the Germans 
fought on the other side of the Alps for at least 
fifty years, during which time the great free towns 
were nearly all seized by tyrant citizens who took 
the chief power. 

In Germany Ruprecht was more respected, and 
233 



234 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

put down the injustice of the Markgraf of Baden, 
who made every one who went through his lands 
pay a heavy toll. Ruprecht married his eldest 
son, Ludwig, to Blanche, daughter of Henry IV. 
of England, but she died at the end of the first 
year. 

On Buprecht's death in 1410, the Electors went 
back to the house of Luxemburg, but they were 
not agreed, half of them taking Jobst of Luxem- 
burg, Markgraf of Moravia, son of a younger son 
of the blind John of Bohemia, and the other half, 
his cousin Siegmund, King of Hungary, and Elect- 
or of Brandenburg. Jobst was crowned, but died 
the. next year, 1411, and at the diet ensuing, 
Siegmund, as Elector, voted for himself, saying 
that there was no one whose good qualities he knew 
so well as his own, The others agreed to accept 
him, and he was crowned at Aachen. 

He was a clever man, with good intentions, but 
vain and flighty, and with the restless spirit of all 
the Luxemburg family. He was anxious to bring 
the Great Schism to an end, for it was now worse 
than ever, an attempt at a council having been 
held which had deposed both Popes and elected 
another, but as neither would obe}^ it, there were 
three Popes, just as there had been, during Jobst's 



Siegmund. 237 

life, three Kings of Germany at the same time. 
The need was the more felt that the teaching of 
the English John Wickliffe had been brought to 
Bohemia by the followers of Queen Anne, and had 
found favor at the University of Prague with two 
Bohemian scholars, Johann Huss, professor of 
philosophy, and Jerome Faulfisch, a master of arts. 
Wenzel had encouraged them, and the more Catho- 
lic professors had all gone off in a body to Leipsig. 
Hussite preaching had spread through Bohemia, 
and the Czechs were strongly crying out against 
the Pope's claim to be universal Bishop, and against 
the denying the Cup in the Holy Communion to 
the laity, as well as many of the horrid corruptions 
that had grown up in the Church. One of the 
worst of these was, that whereas the Popes had 
ventured to declare that whoever went on a crusade 
or on a pilgrimage to Rome would be freed from 
a certain number of years of purifying fire, which 
was called Purgatory ; it had lately been said that 
indulgences, remitting part of the penance, might 
be had for money, which was supposed to go in 
alms, but was generally spent on the needs of the 
Pope and his Cardinals. 

Siegmund was bent on holding a Council to set 
all these abuses to rights. He went to France and 



238 Young Folks' History of Germany. 



Italy, and at last in November, 1414, he brought 
together one of the three Popes, John XXIII. , 3 
Patriarchs, 33 Cardinals, 47 Archbishops, 145 
Bishops, 224 Abbots, 1800 Priests, and 750 doctors 
of theology, at Constance. The} r were followed 

by a strange crew 
of all sorts of peo- 
ple, friars, knights, 
squires, merchants, 
pedlars, mounte- 
banks, jugglers, 
beggars, so that all 
around the city was 
like an enormous 
fair. The clergy of 
each nation were 
to form different 
chambers, Italian, 
German, English, 
French, and Span- 
ish. It was said of 
them, "The Ger- 
mans are imperious 
and patient, the 
F r e n c h boastful 
and vain, the En- 




SIEGMUND. 



Siegmund. 239 

glish ready and wise, the Italians subtle and in- 
triguing." Siegmund made a speech to open the 
Council, but he was wrong in his grammar, and 
when one of the Cardinals corrected him, he said, 
*' I am King of the Romans, and lord of the Latin 
grammar." The first decision was that a Council 
of the Church is supreme to the Pope. Then Sieg- 
mund told the Council of the promises of the two 
absent Popes to resign, and John XXIII., finding 
that horrible stories were coming out against him, 
made oath that he Avould do the same, but instead 
of doing so, he persuaded Friedrich, Duke of Aus- 
tria, to help him run away to Schaffliausen. How- 
ever, it was decided that this was the same as an 
abdication, and Friedrich was severely punished, 
and forced to give him up to be imprisoned for 
life. 

Then the Council began to consider of doctrine. 
Siegmund had given a safe-conduct to Johann Huss, 
to come to and go from Constance, but fearing it 
would not be respected, Huss tried to escape in a 
wagon of hay, but he was found and brought back 
again. Wickliffe's writings were read, and the 
errors in them condemned, and then John Huss 
was brought before the Council and forbidden to 
continue this teaching on pain of death. He would 



240 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

not promise silence, so he was condemned to be 
burnt, and when he appealed to the King's safe- 
conduct, Siegmund said that no faith was to be 
kept with a heretic, and Huss was burnt at a stake 
outside the town. 

The next thing Siegmund did was to go all the 
way to Perpignan on the Pyrennees to force one of 
the anti-Popes to resign, and though he failed to 
do this, he persuaded the Spanish kings to withdraw 
their support, and promise to own any Pope whom 
the Council might elect. He gained the same 
promise from the French by going to Paris, and he 
then visited England, spent St. George's day at 
Windsor with Henry V., and was made a Knight 
of the Garter, and persuaded no less than 400 En- 
glishmen to go to the Council at Constance. 

Not much had been done there except the burn- 
ing of Jerome of Prague; but when the King 
returned, and Cardinal Beaufort arrived, the Ger- 
mans, who had tried hard to get the worst abuses 
reformed before a new Pope was chosen, gave way, 
and Martin IV. was elected. He hushed up mat- 
ters by giving to each nation for a time what they 
most craved for, but staved off any real reforma- 
tion. 

But Huss's death had caused a terrible uproar 



Siegmund. 241 

in Bohemia, headed by a noble called John Ziska. 
He marched through Prague, storming the council 
chamber, and murdering the clergy. King Wenzel 
was dreadfully excited at the sounds, and one of 
his servants saying that he had known for three 
days that there would be an outbreak, he jumped 
up, caught the man by the hair, and would have 
killed him ; but being withheld by bystanders, fell 
into a fit and died in 1419. Ziska, with a banner 
bearing the Chalice, marched through Bohemia, at 
the head of an army of all ranks, sexes, and ages, 
committing horrid ravages, though they called 
themselves God's people. When a battle was 
fought, he bade the women take off their veils and 
mantles and throw them on the ground to entangle 
the feet of the horses of their enemies. Though he 
soon lost his sight, he was a great captain, using a 
terrible iron mace which beat down all before him, 
and he defeated both Siegmund and the Duke of 
Austria. 

He died in the Plague in 1424, but Procop Holy 
Yi^as almost equally successful, and when, in 1431, 
the council of Basle met to confirm the decrees of 
Constance, peace was made with the Hussites, or 
Calixtines, as they termed themselves in honor of 
the chalice, and thev were allowed to have the 



242 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Holy Eucharist in both kinds, freedom of preach- 
ing, and to keep the property of which they had 
robbed the priests. 

After this, Siegmund was owned as King of Bo- 
hemia, and with his second queen, a wicked woman 
named Barbara Cilly, was crowned at Prague. 
They had only one daughter named Elizabeth, and 
Siegmund had given the electoral county of Bran- 
denburg to Friedrich of Hohenzollern, Burgraf of 
Nuremburg. The kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary, 
and the Empire he wished to leave to his daughter's 
husband, Albrecht, Duke of Austria, but Barbara 
was scheming to keep them herself, and marry 
Ladislaf, King of Poland, though he was twenty- 
three and she sixty, and so she pretended to be a 
great friend of the Hussites, so as to get their sup- 
port, though she really believed in nothing. 

Siegmund thought his last illness was owing to 
poison she had given him and ordered her to be 
arrested. He called the barons of Hungary and 
Bohemia to his death-bed, and named his son-in-law, 
Albrecht of Hapsburg, Duke of Austria, as Ins 
successor in these kingdoms. He died in Moravia, 
in his seventieth year, on the 9th" of September, 
1438. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ALBKECHT II., 1438-1440. 

FKIEDRICH III., 1440-1482. 

A LBRECHT of Austria had to fight with the 
-^ ^- Calixtines for the crown of Bohemia, but 
was accepted at last, and he was also chosen King of 
Hungary and King of the Romans. He was a good 
and able man, and as King of Hungary found him- 
self bound to keep back the terrible Othman Turks, 
who had become the chief Mahometan power. 
They had crossed the Dardanelles, made their 
capital at Adrianople, and were threatening Con- 
stantinople on the one hand, and Hungary on the 
other. 

Albrecht marched against them, and encamped 
on the Danube, but he had not men enough to pre- 
vent the fall of the Servian city of Semendria, and 
when he succeeded in collecting an army, the 
243 



244 Young Folks' History of Germany. 



unwholesome marshes in which he was encamped 
brought on illness which forced him to turn back. 
He was so ill that his j)hysician begged him to stop 

at Buda, but he 
declared that he 
should be well if 
he could only see 
Vienna and his 
wife again, and 
was carried for- 
ward in a litter to 
a little village 
near Gran, where 
he died at forty- 
two years old, hav- 
ing only reigned 
two years. He 
left two little 
daughters, and a 
son who was born 
after his death, and 
christened Ladis- 
las or Lassla. 
albrecht ii. The Hungarians 

wanted a man to defend them, and offered their 
crown to King Ladislas of Poland, but Avhen he 




Friedrieh III. 245 

came to be crowned, the holy crown of St. Stephen 
of Hungary could nowhere be found, till Elizabeth 
with her little son appeared at Weissenberg, and 
produced the crown, which had been hidden in his 
cradle. He was crowned with it and knighted at 
twelve weeks old, but the disputed succession was 
a miserable thing for all Europe, when Hungary 
ought to have been the bulwark of Christendom 
against the Turks. However, the King of Poland 
was chosen for the present by the great body of 
Hungarians, and Elizabeth retired into Styria, 
where she soon died. 

The Electors had in the meantime met, and had 
given the crown to the eldest member of the House 
of Hapsburg, Friedrieh, Duke of Styria, first cousin 
to Albrecht, a dull indolent man, but very avari- 
cious and grasping. Everything he had was marked 
with the letters A E I O U, which puzzled every 
one all his life, but after his death a key was found 
in his own handwriting. 

Latin — Aiistriee est Imperare orbi universe. 
German — Alles erdreicli ist Oesterreich untherthan. 

Or, as we may render it in English — 

Austria's Empire is over [the] universe. 
or 

All earth is Oesterrich's underline:. 



246 Young Folks' History of Germany. 



Indeed he thought much of astrology and magic, 
and cared more for these than for the affairs of the 
Empire, except that he grasped all the money that 
came into his possession. He was not Duke of all 
Austria, which was divided between him and his 
brother Albrecht, and he had neither Hungary nor 
Bohemia, but he was 
the last Emperor who 
was crowned at Rome, 
in 1452, and he then 
made the Austrian 
title, Erzherzog, or 
Archduke. 

His wife was Eleanor 
of Portugal, a beauti- 
ful lady who met him 
at Siena, and was mar- 
ried to him at Rome by 
the Pope himself, after 
which he knighted his 
young cousin, Lassla, 
king by right of Bo- 
hemia and Hungary. 
There were prodigious 
feastings, with tables 
friedrich m. for 30,000 guests, and 




Friedrich III. 247 

the fountains running with, wine, but Friedrich 
was so little thought of in Italy that practical jokes 
were played on him. As he rode into Viterbo un- 
der a canopy of cloth of gold, some young men let 
down hooks from the balconies above and pulled 
that up, after which they proceeded to fish for his 
hat which had a valuable jewel in it, but this was 
more than Friedrich could bear, he seized a staff, 
and charged the uncivil crowd. The ringleaders 
were sent to prison, but released at his request. 

Young Lassla died in 1457, and Bohemia chose 
for king, George Podiebrad, a Hussite noble, while 
the Hungarians elected Matthias Corvinus, son of 
John Humiades, a nobleman who had bravely de- 
fended them against the Turks — who, in 1453, had 
taken Constantinople, and were more dangerous 
than ever. Friedrich was greatly disliked even in 
Austria, and was actually besieged in the fortress 
of Vienna with Iris wife and child by the populace, 
till he was delivered by George Podiebrad, whom 
he rewarded by owning him as King of Bohemia. 

His brother Albrecht died in 1463, and he then 
gained the rest of Austria, except the Tyrol, which 
belonged to his cousin Siegmund, as did also Elsass. 
Siegmund being an extravagant, needy prince, 
mortgaged Elsass to the great Duke of Burgundy, 



248 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Charles the Bold, who had inherited Flanders, 
Holland, and all the lands at the mouths of the 
Rhine, Maes, &c., which were partly fiefs of Ger- 
many and partly of France ; Charles was like the 
king of all this, the richest country in Europe, and 
as he had only one child, Mary of Burgundy, he 
proposed to marry her to Maximilian, the only son 
of Friedrich, on being himself elected King of the 
Romans. Thus, after his death, Maximilian and 
Mary would reign together, and large hereditary 
possessions would be added to Austria. Friedrich 
and his son met Charles at Trier. Maximilian, 
whose name had been invented by his father as a 
compound of Maximus and iEmilianus, was a 
splendid young man of eighteen, with long, fair 
hair, a great contrast to his dull, heavy father, who 
was lame from a disease in his foot, brought on by 
a habit of always kicking doors open. 

There were eight weeks of feasting and tilting at 
Charles's expense, and preparations were made for 
Charles's coronation as King of the Romans, when 
five out of the seven Electors, angry that their con- 
sent should have been taken for granted, and for 
different reasons disliking Charles, persuaded the 
Emperor out of the scheme, and in the middle of 
the night Friedrich stole down to the river Moselle, 



Friedrich III. 249 

took boat, and had reached Koln before his flight 
was discovered. He had left all his debts unpaid, 
and no farewells for his host. 

The Duchy of Lorraine had been seized on by 
Charles, and the rightful heir, Rene of Vande'mont, 
was fighting hard for it, supported secretly by 
Louis XI. of France, the great foe of Burgundy. 
And Siegmund had hopes of getting back Elsass 
without paying the sum it was pawned for, since 
Charles's governor, Peter von Hagenbach, was 
harsh and cruel, and hated by the people, who 
jointly with a band of Swiss, rose against him, and 
put Mm to death at Breisach. There broke out a 
great Avar between Burgundy on the one hand, and 
Lorraine, Elsass, and Switzerland on the other. 
The Swiss overthrew the knights in two great bat- 
tles at Granson and Muret, and finally, while 
Charles was besieging Nancy, the capital of Lor- 
raine, they came down on his camp in the dawn of 
the Twelfth day morning of the year 1477, broke 
up his fine army, and left him lying dead in a 
frozen pool. 

His young daughter did not inherit Burgundy, 
but was heiress to the many counties of Holland 
and the Netherlands. She was beset by Louis XI., 
who wanted to marry her to his son, and her own 



"250 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

subjects in the great Flemish towns were turbulent 
and factious, and put her father's trusty old coun- 
cillors to death for a supposed intrigue with 
France. In her distress she sent Maximilian a 
ring, and he hastened to her aid, and married her at 
once. For three years they were most happy to- 
gether, then in 1482 she was killed by a fall from 
her horse, leaving two little children, Philip and 
Margarethe. 




CHAPTER XXY. 

FRIEDRICH III., 1482-149-3. 

I ?RIEDRICH III. was in trouble at home while 
*- his son was in the Low Countries. The 
Pope would not own George Podiebrad as King of 
Bohemia, because he was a Calixtine, and a crusade 
against him was preached in Germany and Austria. 
In much anger, George invaded Austria, and 
brought the Emperor to such distress that he prom- 
ised to support Matthias Corvinus, who had been 
elected by the Bohemian Catholics, if he would de- 
fend Austria. 

However he then grew alarmed at the notion of 
the two kingdoms being joined under so great a 
leader as Matthias, and when George proposed to 
the Bohemians, Ladislas, the son of the King of 
Poland, and of Elizabeth, the daughter of Albrecht 



252 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

II., lie gave the measure his support, and Ladislas, 
claimed the crown on George's death. 

Matthias was very angry at Friedrich's treachery. 
He. defeated the Polish army which was support- 
ing Ladislas, and also gained a great victory over 
the Turks, and took the fortress of Saltzbach on the 
Danube, which was a great protection against the 
Othman power. Then he invaded Austria, where 
the Emperor made no resistance, but fled from 
Vienna and went wandering about from city to city 
and convent to convent, seeking help which he could 
not find. 

Nor could his son give him any aid, for the 
States of Flanders and Holland would not let Max- 
imilian have the charge of them for his little son 
after his wife's death but concluded a treaty with 
Louis XI. of France, and sent the infant Marga- 
rethe to be brought up at Paris for a wife for the 
Dauphin Charles. However, at a diet at Frankfort, 
the Electors chose Maximilian King of the Romans, 
and soon after, Anne, the heiress of Brittany, who 
was sorely pressed by the French on one hand, and 
her own people on the other, sent to beg him to 
come and marry her, and save her from her enemies. 
He set out with a troop of Germans, but he had to 
pass through the city of Bruges, and there the burg- 



Friedrich III. 253 

hers were so angry at his bringing Germans into 
Flanders, that when he came into the town with 
only his own attendants, they rose upon him, and 
drove him into an apothecary's shop, whence he 
was taken to the castle and kept a prisoner for ten 
months, till the German princes collected an army 
and forced the Flemings to make terms, and to set 
him free. He behaved through the whole time 
with the greatest patience and good humor, and 
after giving thanks for his freedom in the Church 
at Bruges, turned to the citizens and said, "We 
are now at peace." By that time Anne of Brittany 
had become the wife of that very Charles of France 
who had been betrothed to Maximilian's daughter 
Margarethe, and she was sent back to Brussels, 
father and daughter being thus both disappointed. 

Maximilian was a fine tall graceful man, who had 
studied all that was then known of language, art, 
and science, and was brave to rashness. He went 
into a den with some lions, and when the door 
closed on him, and they turned on him, he defended 
himself with a shovel till help came. He climbed 
to the topmost pinnacle of the spire of Ulm Cathe- 
dral, and stood there with half one foot overhanging. 
He was a most fearless chamois hunter, and had 
been in many terrible dangers from winds and 



254 Young Folks' History of Germajty. 

avalanches in the Tyrolean mountains. Once he 
slipped down a precipice called the Martinswand, 
and was caught by a small ledge of rock with a 
cleft behind it, whence there was no way up or 
down. The whole population came out and saw 
him, but could do nothing to help him, or hinder 
him from being starved. He threw down a stone 
with a paper fastened to it, begging that Mass 
might be celebrated below, and a shot fired to let 
him know the moment of the consecration. At 
night, however, he suddenly appeared among his 
friends, saying that a shepherd boy had come and 
led him through a passage in the cleft through the 
mountain, and brought him back in safety. This 
shepherd was never seen again, and was believed 
by the Tyrolese to have been an angel. A little 
church built by Maximilian still stands on the top 
of the rock. 

For his daring courage he was called the Last of 
the Knights, and he made many experiments on 
the management of fire-arms, which were just com- 
ing into general use. In these he ran great risks 
and had hairbreadth escapes. Once the long- 
pointed toe of his boot was caught and torn off by 
the wheel of a machine for turning stone cannon- 
balls, and another time he was just in time to de- 



rwir 




MAXIMILIAN' ANT) ALBERT DLTtER. 



Friedrlch III. 257 

tect his fool putting a match to the mouth of a 
cannon before which he was standing. He made, 
however, many improvements in the artillery of 
the time, he greatly encouraged printing, and es- 
pecially favored the great Nuremburg painter, Al- 
brecht Durer. He even wrote in great part two 
curious books called " Theurdank " and " The 
White King," in which he describes his whole life 
and adventures in a sort of allegory, in both bring- 
ing in his marriage with Marie of Burgundy, for 
whom he never ceased to mourn all his life. 

Meantime the misrule and lawlessness of Ger- 
many were unbearable. A robber knight called 
Kunz of Kaumngen, in 1455, actually scaled the 
Castle of Altenberg, belonging to the Elector 
Friedrich the Mild of Saxony, in the middle of the 
night, and stole his two little sons, Ernst and Al- 
brecht. Ernst was hidden by some of the band in 
a cave, but Kunz himself, carrying Albrecht before 
him on his horse, halted in a forest at daybreak, 
and dismounted to refresh the child with some 
wild strawberries. A charcoal-burner came up at 
the moment, and Albrecht shrieked out to him for 
help, when he laid about him so gallantly with his 
long pole, that he detained Kunz till at his whistle 
other woodmen came up, the boy was rescued, and 



258 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

the robber taken. His gang then gave up the 
other child to his parents, and Kunz was beheaded 
at Freiburg a week later. 

The princes and cities began to exert themselves 
to prevent such outrages, the Swabian League es- 
pecially, feud letters were strictly forbidden, and 
the castles on the mountains where the nobles had 
held out against all law and order were stormed, 
and the nobles reduced to submission, or else put 
to death. In all this the Emperor took little part, 
being chiefly taken up with astrology and alchemy, 
and with hoarding treasure, and indeed he behaved 
shamefully in withholding the ransoms of his own 
Austrian nobles who had been made prisoners by 
the Turks. 

When Siegmund of Hapsburg died he left Tyrol 
to Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria, who had married 
Friedrich's daughter, Kunigunde. He also seized 
the great imperial city of Regensburg, but with the 
aid of the Swabian League he was reduced to make 
peace by the mediation of Maximilian. The high 
qualities of the King of the Romans had led Mat- 
thias Corvinus to be willing to make him his heir, 
but the Magyars chose instead Ladislas of Poland, 
who was already King of Bohemia. 

Friedrich was seventy-eight years old when he 



Friedrich III. 



259 



had his diseased leg cut off. He took it in his 
hand, saying, " There ! a sound boor is better than 
a sick Kaisar." He seemed to be going on well, 
but he ate too plentifully of melons, and died on 
the 19th of August, 1493, having reigned fifty-three 
years, a reign longer than that of any Emperor ex- 
cept Augustus. 




V^i 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

MAXIMILIAN 1493-1519. 

KAISAR Max, as every one called him, though 
he never was crowned as Emperor, began 
by gallantly driving back the Turks, who had ad- 
vanced as far as Laybach, so that he was hailed at 
Innspruck, his favorite city, as a deliverer. 

He then married Bianca Maria, the sister of Gio- 
vanni Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, because he wished 
to have a footing in Italy, but he never loved her 
like the wife of his youth, and she seems to have 
been a dull, heavy woman, who grew inordinately 
fat from eating snails. The affairs of Italy were 
the great concern, for Bianca's uncle, Ludovico 
Sforza, after having brought about an invasion of 
Italy by Charles VIII. of France, was ready to do 
anything to get rid of him. Maximilian joined the 
league against him, and for many years there was 






Maximilian. 



261 



a continual struggle in Italy between Germans, 
French, and Spaniards, the Italians themselves 
sometimes taking part with one, sometimes with 




Maximilian. 

the other, and only wishing to get rid of them all 
alike as foreigners. The Pope, Alexander VI., was 



262 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

one of the worst of men, and had brought the 
Church into such a state, that all good men felt 
that there was no cure but calling a General Coun- 
cil. Philip, the son of Maximilian and Marie of 
Burgundy, had been married to Juana, the daughter 
of Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and Isabel, Queen 
of Castille. He died in 1504, leaving two sons, 
Charles and Ferdinand, and five daughters. His 
wife became insane with grief, and the children 
were brought up by Margarethe, his sister, who 
ruled their inheritance of the Low Countries with 
great wisdom and skill. She and her father wrote 
very amusing letters to one another, which are still 
preserved. 

She was sent to manage a treaty which Maxi- 
milian made with Louis XII. of France against the 
republic of Venice, and met the French minister, 
the Cardinal of Amboise, at Cambrai, where she 
wrote to her father he and she were nearly ready 
to pull each other's hair, but at last they agreed to 
attack the Venetians, who had beaten the Ger- 
mans and laughed at the Kaisar, calling him Max- 
imilian the moneyless. Both he and Louis XII. 
crossed the Alps, but the German nobles had little 
mind for the war, and the only troops he could 
trust were the landsknechts, foot soldiers of low 



Maximilian. 263 

birth, who carried heavy pikes, formed troops un- 
der captains of their own, and hired themselves 
out to fight. At the siege of Padua, Maximilian 
asked the French knights to storm the place to- 
gether with the landsknechts, but they made an- 
swer that they would not do so unless the German 
knights likewise joined in the assault. Maximilian 
thought this fair, but the German nobility made 
answer that they would only fight on horseback, 
and that it was beneath them to dismount and 
scramble through ditches and walls. The Kaisar 
was so much ashamed of them that he set out at 
night with only five men, rode forty miles without 
stopping, sent orders to break up the camp, and re- 
tired to Austria. 

He was always making great schemes, and break- 
ing down suddenly in them for want of money, or 
of the support of his princes, and thus, though he 
was the cleverest sovereign on the throne, and with 
the highest ideas and noblest notions, he was little 
trusted or respected, and he did very strange things. 
Julius II. drew him and Henry VIII. into what he 
called the Holy League, for driving the French 
out of Italy, and when Henry attacked them at 
home, and laid siege to Terouenne, Maximilian 



264 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

went and served in his army as a private knight for 
100 crowns a-day. 

And when Julius II. died, Maximilian actually 
tried to be elected Pope, thinking that thus he 
could best call a council and reform the Church, 
but he was not attended to, and Pope Leo X. was 
chosen. All this made foreign nations laugh at him 
and think him untrustworthy, but his failures were 
chiefly owing to the disobedience and want of 
public spirit of the German princes. He once said 
the King of France reigned over asses, for they 
would bear any burthen he pleased; the King of 
Spain was a king of men, who only submitted in 
reason ; the King of England was a king of angels, 
who did him willing, faithful service ; but the Kaisar 
reigned over kings who only obeyed him when 
they chose. 

And that was seldom. The Germans were in a 
bad state, rude and boorish, too poor and too proud 
to seek improvements, drunkards and great stick- 
lers for rank. The free cities were much better in 
some ways, but two of them actually went to war 
because a maiden of one refused to dance with a 
young burgher of the other. Maximilian suffered 
in authority by the loss of Bohemia, and Switzer- 
land entirely broke off from the Empire, but he did 



Maximilian. 267 

much toward setting things in a better state for the 
future, by dividing the Empire into circles, Bavaria, 
Swabia, Franconia, Austria, Burgundy, Upper and 
Lower Saxony, and the Upper and Lower Rhine. 
A governor was placed over each circle, whose duty 
it was to carry out the decisions of the diet and to 
keep order. Austria was kept in excellent order, 
and there was a court set up to hear appeals from 
the country. It was called the Aulic Council, from 
Aula, a hall, and became very important. But do 
what he would, the Germans had not public spirit 
enough to join their Kaisar in attacking the Turks, 
who grew more dangerous every year. Maximilian 
vainly appealed to them. A very large meteoric 
stone which came down near Encisheim was held 
to be a thunderbolt, and Maximilian had it hung- 
up in the Church, to show what might be looked 
for from the wrath of Heaven, but all in vain. No 
one heeded his warnings. 

The wisest man in Germany was the good Elec- 
tor of Saxony, Friedrich, son of the Albrecht who 
had been stolen. He had founded a university at 
Wittenberg, and here one of the professors was 
Martin Luther, the son of a woodcutter of Thurin- 
gia, who had struggled into getting educated at the 
University of Erfurt, and had become a monk. He 



268 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

had been much troubled in mind by the sense of 
sin, until a good old monk taught him to think 
most of the Merits of his Saviour. He read the 
Bible with all his might, and became a great preach- 
er, as well as a doctor of theology at Wittenberg. 
A friar named John Tetzel came to the neighbor- 
hood selling indulgences, and saying such shocking 
things to recommend them, that Luther's spirit 
was stirred, and on the 31st of October, 1517, he 
nailed to the door at Wittenberg a paper called a 
thesis, in which he challenged the whole system on 
which the sale of indulgences was founded. The 
thesis was printed, and spread all over German}% so 
that there was a vehement controversy, in which 
Maximilian took some interest, but he was much 
taken up with trying to secure the Empire to his 
grandson Charles, and likewise with the endeavor 
to raise Germany against the Turks. For this 
purpose he held a diet at Augsburg, but a knight 
named Ulrich of Hutten sent round a paper calling 
the Pope a worse foe to Christendom than the 
Sultan, and the princes disputed and did nothing. 
The Kaisar went away grieved, and soon after fell 
ill of a fever, and died at Well in Austria in his 
fifty-ninth year, in 1519. A chest he had always 



Ma 



xi) nu urn. 



269 



carried about with him for the last four years 
turned out to be his coffin, and he was buried by 
his own desire at Neustadt, though he had built 
himself a most beautiful monument at Innspruck. 




CHAPTER XXVII. 

CHAKLES V., 1519-1529. 

ON the death of Maximilian, the Empire was 
coveted by three kings, Henry VIII. of Eng- 
land, Francis I. of France, and Charles * of Spain. 
Henry, however, on enquiry, found that he was 
better off in England than he would have been 
with the addition of the stormy Empire, and gave 
up all thoughts of offering himself, but Francis de- 
clared that he and Charles were both suitors for 
the same lady, and sent wagon-loads of treasure to 
decide her choice. 

The Electors, however, wished to choose the 
good Frederick the Wise of Saxony, and would 
have done so but that he declared that the Em- 
peror ought to have much larger lands of his own 

*In Germany Karl, in Spain Carlos, but he is generally 
known by his Flemish name Charles. 

270 



Charles V. 



271 



than his half of Saxony, in order to be able to 
protect the country from the Turks, and he also 
thought himself too old for such a charge. He, 




CHARLES V. 



therefore, led them to choose the late Kaisar's 
grandson, Charles of Hapsburg, Archduke of Aus- 
tria, and lord of all the little fiefs that made up the 



272 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Low Countries, as well as King of all Spain, Naples, 
and Sicily, though his mother, the poor, crazy 
Juana,, was still alive, watching her husband's 
coffin, in hopes that he would wake again. 

Charles had been born at Ghent with the cen- 
tury, and was only nineteen. His aunt Margarethe 
had educated him at Brussels, and he was more of 
a Fleming than anything else. He was the exact 
contrary of his brilliant grandfather, grave, silent, 
thoughtful, very slow in making up his mind, but 
never changing his purpose when he had once de- 
cided. He was long in growing up, and had a 
sensitive nervous timidity about him, which he 
only kept under by very strong self-control. He 
was a religious man, and anxious for the good of 
the Church, and he set before him from the first 
two great works as the duty of the head of the 
Holy Roman Empire — namely, to hold a general 
council for the purifying of the Church, and to 
have a crusade to drive back the Turks ; but in 
both these he was hindered all through his reign by 
the jealously of Francis I. 

Luther wrote to him oh the state of the Church 
in strong and bitter words, and at the same time 
Pope Leo X. put forth a bull denouncing Luther's 
teaching, and commanding that if he did not re- 



Charles V. 273 

cant within sixty days he should be sent to Rome 
and dealt with as a heretic. This bull was burnt 
by Luther and his scholars in the market-place at 
Wittenberg, all his friends refused to publish it, 
and he appealed from it to a General Council of 
the Church. 

Charles called together a Diet to meet at Wurms, 
on the 6th of January, 1521, and invited Luther 
thither with a safe-conduct. It was feared that 
this might be no more heeded than the safe-conduct 
of Siegmund to Huss, but Luther declared he 
would go "though there should be as many devils 
at Wurms as there were tiles on the roofs," and he 
came into the city in a wagon chanting Psalms. 

The Diet was the largest that had ever met in 
Germany, for Luther's friends mustered there to 
protect him, and an old captain of landsknechts, 
George of Freundsburg, came and shook him by 
the hand, saying, "Little monk, thou art on a 
march, and charge such as we captains never saw 
in our bloodiest battle, but if thy cause be just, On 
in God's name, He will not forsake thee." Luther 
was asked whether he had written the books that 
were before the Diet. He said yes, and began to 
defend himself in Latin. Charles deemed him 
rough and coarse, and said, " This is not the man 



274: Young Folks' History of Germany. 

to make me a heretic." The Emperor thought a 
Diet was not the place for discussing religious mat- 
ters, and so would only have him asked by the 
Chancellor whether he would recant, or run the 
risks of the law against heretics. Luther looked 
around, and said, " Here I am. I can no other- 
wise. God help me. Amen." 

The clergy held other arguments with him, but 
lie had gone on to dispute many doctrines besides 
that of the power of the Pope to pardon sin, and 
it was plain there could be no agreement. Charles 
would not let his safe-conduct be violated, but 
Luther's friends, not trusting to this, sent him 
away secretly by night, and fearing he might be ar- 
rested at Wittenberg, the Elector of Saxony caused 
him to be waylaid on the road by men who passed 
for robbers. They disguised him as a Junker, as 
squires were called, and carried him off to the 
Tower of Wartburg, where he spent his time in 
translating the Bible into German. 

Charles at this Diet divided his lands of Austria 
with his younger brother Ferdinand, who married 
Anne, the daughter of Ladislaf, King of Hungary 
and Bohemia. Ferdinand was a man whom every 
one liked, and was a most faithful brother to 
Charles, who left him to govern in Germany when 



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LUTHER AT WARTBURG. 



Charles V. 277 

he himself was obliged to return to Spain, because 
his old tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, whom he had left 
to govern there, had been chosen Pope. Adrian 
was a good man, and Charles hoped by his help to 
reform the Church, but he was too good for the 
wicked court of Rome, and was soon poisoned. A 
Pope was elected, named Clement VII., whose 
great desire was to prevent any council that could 
lessen the gains of the Pope and Cardinals. 

Francis I. had begun a war almost immediately 
on Charles's election, on four different quarrels, 
namely, the kingdom of Naples, the dukedom of 
Milan, and the French fiefs of the Low Countries, 
all which Francis said belonged to him, and the 
kingdom of Navarre, which was a Spanish quarrel. 
Charles said that he praised God that he did not 
begin the war, and that when they left off, one or 
other of them would be much poorer than when they 
began. 

And indeed, in the Spaniards Charles had the 
very best soldiers then in the world, and could do 
almost anything with them, so that he at once 
drove the French out of Milan. His chief general 
was the Marquis of Pescara, a Neapolitan noble, 
and on a quarrel with his master, the chief noble- 
man in France, the Constable of Bourbon deserted 



278 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

to him. The King invaded Italy and beseiged 
Pavia, but Pescara and Bourbon marched against 
him, routed his army, made him prisoner, and sent 
him. to Charles at Madrid. Charles would have no 
rejoicings, as he said that a war between Christian 
kings was only a matter for sorrow. He would 
only release Francis on condition of his giving up 
all claims to the Sicilies and Milan, and also the 
duchy of Burgundy, which had gone back to the 
crown on the death of Charles the Bold. Francis 
raged at first and said he would rather give up his 
crown, but soon he pined himself ill, and then 
made an oath, with no subject of Charles to hear 
him, that he was under constraint, and should not 
hold himself bound by his promises. Then he 
engaged to do all Charles had demanded, and was 
taken to the frontier and set free, giving his two 
little sons as hostages. 

But he would not keep his word nor give up the 
duchy of Burgundy, and madg a league with 
Clement VII., who wanted to prevent the Emperor 
from forcing him to call a council. He suffered, 
however, for this league, for there were a number 
of wild landsknechts in the north of Italy, with the 
Constable of Bourbon and George of Freundsberg, 
and they took it into their heads to march to Rome 



Charles V. 279 

and plunder it, meaning to go on to Naples, and 
make Bourbon king. The Pope had no troops 
able to make much defence, though Bourbon was^ 
shot dead as he was about to enter. The lawless 
soldiers spread all over the city, and the Pope shut 
himself up in the Castle of St. Angelo. There was 
horrible cruelty, plunder, and sacrilege for many 
days, before the soldiers, fairly worn out with 
their excesses, could be got out of Rome by Lannoy,, 
Charles's Flemish governor of Naples. The French 
army in the north of Italy caught the plague that 
had begun among the landsknechts at Rome, and 
nearly all perished, and Francis was obliged again 
to make peace. His mother and Charles's aunt 
Margarethe met at Cambria and settled the terms. 
It was called the Ladies' Peace, and was signed in 
1529. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

CHARLES V., 1530-1535. 

AFTER the Ladies' Peace was signed, Charles 
V. met Clement VIII. at Bologna, and was 
crowned King of Italy and Roman Emperor. He 
urged Clement so strongly to hold a council that 
there was no withstanding him. The Pope prom- 
ised to send out letters, and Charles went to hold 
a diet at Augsburg, to take measures for driving 
back the Turks, and setting Europe at peace from 
without as well as within. 

During the nine years since the Diet of Wurms, 
the opinions of Luther had made great progress. 
Luther had, after about eighteen months, come 
back from Wartburg, because Carlstadt, one of his 
pupils, was doing such wild things at Wittenberg, 
that it was needful to interfere. Luther had, how- 



Charles V. 281 

ever, come to think convents and monastic vows 
were harmful, and those monks and nuns who ac- 
cepted his teaching left their convents, and many 
priests married. There was no vow to hinder 
priests from wedlock, but monks and nuns had 
promised not to many. However, Luther thought 
them not binding, and himself married Katherine 
Bora, one of five nuns who had been carried out 
of their convent in empty beer barrels. 

When all these changes were happening, the 
peasants, who had been horribly ill-used for ages, 
made a great rising in Swabia, Franconia, Elsass, 
and Thuringia. Their chief leader was one Thomas 
Miinzer, who declared that all men's goods ought 
to be in common, and led about a host of miners, 
laborers, and woodmen, who perpetrated the most 
horrid cruelties on the unfortunate nobles and la- 
dies who fell into their hands, and forced some of 
the knights to march in their ranks, while they 
wandered about, sacking every castle and convent 
whose walls were not strong enough to keep them 
out. Troops were raised by Philip, Landgraf of 
Hesse, Heinrich, Duke of Brunswick, and Johann, 
brother of the Elector of Saxony, and met the 
peasants at Frankenhausen. Miinzer pointed to a 
rainbow in the sky, and told his j)oor deluded fol- 



282 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

lowers that it was the pledge of victory, but they 
were trodden down by the well-armed knights and 
slaughtered like sheep. Miinzer himself was found 
hidden in a hayloft and executed. One prisoner, 
when asked how he had fared, said, " Ah, sir ! the 
rule of the peasants is ten times worse than the 
rule of a knight." Every one was hot against these 
unhappy peasants, except the good Elector Fried- 
rich, who said if they were brutal savages it was 
the fault of the princes who had left them to be- 
come so, and whose heart was broken by the evils 
around him. He died soon after, saying he knew 
not where to find faith or truth on earth, and was 
succeeded by his brother Johann. 

A diet had been held by the Archduke Ferdi- 
nand at Speier, in the hope of opening the eyes of 
the Germans to the need of supporting his brother- 
in-law, Ludwig, King of Hungary, against the 
Turks, but they would attend to nothing but the 
disputes between Luther and the Church, and he 
could get no aid against the common enemy, while 
they decided that each prince might have whatever 
form of doctrine he chose in his lands, and there- 
upon the Elector of Saxony, the Landgraf of Hesse, 
and some others, had all the churches given over 
to the Lutherans, and seized the abbeys and the 



Charles V. 283 

lands of the bishoprics. Albrecht of Brandenburg, 
Grand Master of the Teutonic Order of Knights, 
followed their example, helped himself to the lands 
of the Order in Prussia, and obtained investiture 
of them from the King of Poland. 

Thus left unaided, Ludwig of Hungary and Bo- 
hemia was defeated and killed by the Turks in the 
terrible battle of Mohatz, in 1527. Ferdinand was at 
once chosen King of Bohemia, but a Transylvanian, 
named Johann Zapoyla, was chosen King of Hun- 
gary, and called in the Sultan Solyman to support 
him. They even laid siege to Vienna, but Ferdi- 
nand beat them off, drove the Turks beyond the 
Danube, and was crowned King of Hungary. Bo- 
hemia and Hungary have ever since had kings of 
the House of Austria. 

Ferdinand being now stronger, held another diet 
at Speier, in 1529, where the Catholics were in the 
larger numbers, and ordained that, till the council 
should be held, there should be no more changes 
in religion, and that Mass should be said in the 
churches. The Lutherans made a protest against 
this edict, and they were therefore called Protest- 
ants. The name gradually spread to all who broke 
from the Roman Catholic Church, but it properly 



284 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

meant those who protested against the edict of 
Speier. 

It was high time that Charles should be at home, 
and he came immediately after his coronation in 
1530, and summoned a great diet at Augsburg. 
The Protestants prepared for it by drawing up a 
great confession of their faith. " It was chiefly the 
work of Philip Melancthon, a very good and 
learned man, a great friend of Luther, and it has 
ever since been looked upon as the great rule of 
faith of the Lutherans. 

The Protestants wanted to read the confession in 
the great hall of the council, but this was not per- 
mitted, and it was read in a chapel that would only 
hold 200 persons, but as the windows were open, 
every one who chose could hear it. Charles, not 
knowing German well, wished it to be read in 
Latin, but Johann of Saxony said that on German 
soil it must be read in the mother tongue. Charles 
listened courteously, and accepted a copy both in 
Latin and German, but gave no opinion, since all 
was to be put off to the council, and in the mean- 
time the Latin service and old rites were to go on. 
Philip of Hesse and Johann of Saxony on this 
went off from the diet, and with five more princes 




CHARLES V. AND FUGGER. 



Charles V. 287 

and twelve towns formed, at the city of Schmal- 
kalde, a league for the defence of their doctrine. 

In the meantime the rest of the diet elected the 
Emperor's brother, Ferdinand, King of the Romans, 
and Charles strove with all his might to array his 
forces for an attack on the Turks, but the league 
refused to stir unless he permitted the Protestants 
to have their own way. 

The need was so great that, at Nuremburg, Charles 
made peace, consenting that things should remain 
as they were till the council, and he thus succeeded 
in getting the Germans together to the number of 
120,000, upon which the Sultan retreated and left 
Hungary in peace. 

Charles now determined to attack the Turks and 
their allies the Moors in their settlement on the 
coast of Africa, where there were several seaports, 
such as Tunis and Algiers, which were perfect 
nests of pirates. These Moorish ships continually 
tormented the coasts of Spain and Italy, carrying 
off the inhabitants, and forcing them to the miser- 
able life of slaves, rowing their galleys, until some 
ransom should arrive. To put an end to these 
robberies, Charles mustered all his Aragonese ships 
as well as the German soldiers, and with the aid of 
the Genoese and the Knights of St. John, he most 



288 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

gallantly captured Tunis, and set free no less than 
22,000 Christian slaves, who were shut up in dun- 
geons, toiling in gardens, or at the fortifications, or 
laboring at the oar. 

He had been obliged to borrow very heavily of 
the great merchant, Fugger of Augsburg, to fit out 
this expedition. The next time he came to Augs- 
burg, Fugger begged for the honor of entertaining 
him. A fire was burning on the hearth full of 
sweet odors from precious spices and woods. The 
Emperor said it was the most costly fire he had 
ever seen. "It shall be more costly still," said the 
merchant, and into it he threw all the bonds for 
the sum due to him from Charles. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

CHARLES V., 1535. 

IT was not till Clement VII. and Francis I. were 
both dead that Charles V., after fifteen years' 
waiting, was able to have the Council of the West- 
ern Chur<5h really summoned. Clement was al- 
ways putting it off, and Francis took advantage of 
every disaster that befell Charles to harass him. 
In an expedition which Charles made to Algiers, 
his fleet was shattered by a tempest, and Francis 
immediately began a fresh Avar with him ; and 
when Charles had to ask leave to travel through 
France, when he wanted to go from Spain to Flan- 
ders, Francis feasted him splendidly, but tormented 
him to give the duchy of Milan to the Dauphin 
Henry. 

When, however, these two were dead, Pope 
Paul II. called on the Council to meet at Trent in 



290 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

the Tyrol, but in the time that had been lost the 
Protestants had grown much more hostile. Luther, 
who had always been loyal to the Kaisar, was dead, 
and so was Henry VIII. of England, so that it was 
much more difficult to get together any but Span- 
ish, and Italian, and Austrian clergy, all strong 
Eoman Catholics. They met in 1545, and the first 
thing they did was to condemn all translations of 
the Bible that were not the same with the Latin one 
made by St. Jerome in the fifth century, and this 
showed the Lutherans, as they said, that there was 
no chance for them of a fair hearing, so they re- 
fused to come. The head of the Schmalkaldic 
League was now Johann Friedrich, ^lector of 
Saxony, nephew to Friedrich the Wise, and a war 
began between him and the Emperor. They were 
on the opposite sides of the river Elbe at Muhldorf. 
A miller, whose horses the Saxons had seized, 
showed the Emperor's Spaniards the way across 
the river, and Johann Friedrich was surprised in 
his camp. He fought bravely, but was made pris- 
oner, and led to Charles. His kinsman, Moritz, 
Duke of the other half of Saxony, had married the 
daughter of Philip, Lanclgraf of Hesse. Though 
he was a Lutheran, he held with the Emperor, who 
promised to make him Elector instead of Johann 



Charles V. 291 

Friedrich. Sybilla of Cleves, wife to Johann 
Friedrich, held out Wittenberg against the Em- 
peror, but Charles made it known that he should 
behead the Elector unless the city were given up, 
and she was obliged to yield. When he came into 
the city he would not let his Spanish subjects dis- 
turb Luther in his grave, nor would he stop the 
Lutheran service, saying his war was, not with 
religion, but with treason. 

The other Protestant princes were forced to sur- 
render, one by one. Moritz of Saxony brought in 
his father-in-law, Philip of Hesse, on the under- 
standing that he should be safe, without any (einiges) 
imprisonment, but Charles caused him to be shut 
up in a fortress, and it appeared that the word they 
had read einiges was really ewiges, or perpetual. 
This was viewed as a terrible breach of Charles's 
word. 

He had forced the Protestants to send repre- 
sentatives to the Council, but behold, there was no 
Council to go to. Paul II. had been drawn by his 
greedy kindred, the Farnese family, to ask for 
lands in Italy that Charles would not grant, and 
then had allied himself with Henry II. of France, 
begun a war in Italy, and called back his Italians 
from the Council. 



292 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

No more could be done, and Charles was bitterly 
disappointed. He called together a diet at Augs- 
burg to settle what was to be done. The Germans 
were very angry at the defeat of their princes by 
his Spanish soldiers, and looked on him more as a 
foreign conqueror than as their Emperor ; and, on 
the other hand, many of them were so coarse and 
boorish, and such drunkards, that Charles, and the 
Flemish, Spanish, and Italian gentlemen despised 
them. All Charles could do was to cause one 
Lutheran and two Catholic divines to draw up a 
code of rules for worship that might be observed in 
the Interim, till the Council could meet again, but 
this Interim pleased no one, and was distrusted 
by everybody. 

Charles further offended the Germans by show- 
ing that he wanted them to engage to elect his son 
Philip King of the Romans when Ferdinand should 
become Emperor, instead of Ferdinand's son, Max- 
imilian. Philip would of course be King of Spain, 
and he was a thorough Spaniard, grave, cold, and 
gloomy, while Maximilian Avas a bright, kindly, 
gracious German. They would make no such 
promise, and showed further displeasure when 
Charles refused to release Philip of Hesse, and on 
this Moritz of Saxony began plotting against him. 



Charles V. 295 

The city of Magdeburg had never accepted the 
Interim, and Moritz had been sent to reduce it. 
He turned the army he was commanding against 
the Kaisar himself, allied himself with Henry II. 
of France, and joined the discontented Germans 
just when half of Charles's Spanish troops were in 
Hungary fighting with the Turks, and the other 
half in Italy, and he himself was lying ill of the 
gout at Innspruck, whither he had gone to try 
to collect the Council once more. Such a sudden 
dash did Moritz make at Innspruck that the Em- 
peror had to rise from his bed, and be carried in a 
litter over the mountain passes by torchlight. He 
released the Elector, Johann Friedrich, who, how- 
ever, came with him rather than fall into the hands 
of his kinsman. Moritz would have pursued them, 
but his troops stopped to plunder Innspruck, and 
Charles safely reached the fortress of Villach in 
Carinthia. 

The King of the Romans had a conference with 
Moritz at Passau, and agreed to his conditions — 
viz., that the Landgraf should be released, and that 
each German prince might have such worship as he 
chose in his dominions, on which Moritz promised 
himself to head a crusade against the Turks. The 
Kaisar was forced to consent, though very unwill- 



296 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

ingly, and Albrecht of Brandenburg refused to be 
included in the treaty, being really nothing but a 
savage robber, whose cruelties were shocking. 
Mo-ritz marched against him, and defeated him at 
Sievenhausen, but was killed in the moment of vic- 
tory, when only thirty-two years old. Albrecht 
fled into France, and there soon died, but his family 
still held the lands of the Teutonic order which he 
had seized. 

Henry II. of France had allied himself Avith 
Moritz, called himself the Trotector of the Liberties 
of Germany, and, with this excuse, seized the three 
Bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. Charles 
in vain tried to retake Metz. He was much broken 
and aged, and had been deex^ly grieved by the 
failure of the Council and the treason of Moritz, 
whom he had loved like a son. At a diet held at 
Augsburg, in 1555, a religious peace was agreed to, 
leaving the princes free to establish what faith they 
chose, and the next year the Emperor, who had 
long ago made up his mind to give up his crowns, 
and spend his age in devotion, collected his people 
at Brussels, and there gave up his kingdoms of 
Spain, Naples, and the Low Countries to his son 
Philip, and Austria to his brother Ferdinand. 

He then retired to the Convent of Yusle in Spain, 




CHARLES V. IN THE CLOISTER, ST. JUST. 



Charles V. 299 

where he spent his time in prayers, and in his 
garden, and in writing letters of advice to his son. 
One of his great pleasures was studying mechanics 
and watchmaking, and there is a story that, when 
he found no two of his clocks would keep quite the 
same time, he said that it was just the same with 
men's minds. His two sisters, the widowed Queens 
of France and Hungary, lived near, and saw him 
constantly, and he led a tranquil life till his death 
in 1558. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

FERDINAND I., 1556-1564. 

I FERDINAND I. was already well known and 

-*- much loved and respected in Germany, where 

he had served his brother faithfully, and yet won 

the hearts of all the Germans, who knew him to be 

perfectly faithful to his word ; so much so that when 

a nobleman to whom he had promised some favor 

acted so as not to deserve it, he still gave it, saying 

he cared more for his honor, than for the man's 

dishonor. 

The fierce old Pope, Paul IV., who was chosen 

in 1555, hated all the House of Austria, because he 

was a Neapolitan, and Spain had conquered his 

native kingdom, and he would not acknowledge 

Ferdinand except on condition of his giving up the 

peace of Augsburg and persecuting the Protestants. 

But this Ferdinand would not do, for the peace 

300 



Ferdinand I. 301 

had been chiefly of his own making, and lie believed 
that if the Pope would give up some of the customs 
of the Church of Rome they might yet be brought 




FERDINAND I. 



back to it. Indeed he sent into Bohemia the 
Jesuits, a body of priests who had been formed in 
Spain, specially to attend to education and to 



302 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

the training of consciences, and they brought over 
a great many of the old Hussites to the Church. 

Though Ferdinand kept out of the old war 
between Spain and France, while that was still 
going on there was no chance of calling together 
again the Council of Trent; but when at last 
Henry II. of France was thoroughly beaten in the 
battle of St. Quentin by Philip II. of Spain, both 
Emperor and Pope were anxious for it, and Bulls 
were issued inviting all nations thereto, and also 
the Protestants. The Protestants met at Naum- 
burg in Saxony to receive the message, which was 
sent to them by Cardinal Commendone. The 
Elector August, son to Moritz, took the lead, and 
told the Cardinal that they could not accept the 
letters because the Pope called them his sons and 
they did not own him for their father; and they 
spoke so violently that he answered them thus — 
" What, mean ye by these bitter words against one 
who hath undertaken a long journey in the cause 
of Christian unity ? " And then he reproached them 
for their many divisions and irreverent ways, saying 
that over the wine-pot and the dice-box people 
disputed on the mysteries of religion. They were a 
little subdued by this rebuke, but they ended by 
declaring that whatever the Council might say, 



Ferdinand I. 303 

they would hold to the Confession of Augsburg. 
Only the Elector Palatine, who had taken up the 
teachings of Calvin, which went even further from 
the Roman doctrine than did those of Luther, was 
very loth to sign the Confession. 

The Council met at Trent, and Ferdinand tried 
to get the Bishops to consent to give the Cup to the 
laity, to let priests be married men, to have parts 
of the service in the language of the country, to 
put a stop to selling indulgences, and to have fewer 
Cardinals, and better rules for electing the Pope. 
The French wished for these things also, but the 
Italians were against all change and joined with the 
Spaniards against them. There was much fierce 
quarrelling, and at last, though some rules were 
made, which have kept the Roman Catholic clergy 
in better order ever since, and prevented indul- 
gences from ever being sold, they would make no 
other real reform, and destroyed all hope of bring- 
ing back the Protestants and Calvinists. Ferdi- 
nand said the Council would do no good if it sat 
for a hundred years, and was very glad to have it 
broken up. However, in Germany, to please the 
Emperor, the Pope, for a time, allowed the admin- 
istration of the Cup and the marriage of the clergy, 
and Ferdinand strove hard to bring about the other 



304 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

matters he had asked for. He succeeded so far 
that there is a part of the service still in German 
instead of Latin in Austria and the Tyrol. 

Indeed Ferdinand was a great peacemaker, and a 
thoroughly good man. His wife, Anne of Hungary, 
was an excellent woman, and his eldest son, Maxi- 
milian, was so much beloved that the Electors 
heartily chose him as King of the Romans. He was 
the first to be so chosen, without the coronation of 
an Emperor by the Pope to make way for him. 

Good as were the Imperial family, the Empire 
was in a sad state; indeed it had been growing 
backwards rather than forwards in all good things 
ever since the time of Friedrich Barbarossa. Then 
the Germans had been quite equal with the English, 
French, and Italians in all matters of improvement 
and civilization, but first the Italian wars called off 
their Emperors, and then there were quarrels about 
their election, and those who had only small 
hereditary possessions were not strong enough to 
keep the princes and nobles in order. The greater 
princes and the free towns managed to establish 
some rule, and the Swabian League had destined 
the worst of the lesser independent nobles. Maxi- 
milian's arrangement of the circles did some good, 
but Charles the Fifth's reign had only made things 



Ferdinand I. 305 

worse, by adding quarrels between Protestant and 
Roman Catholic to all the rest. He had indeed 
subdued the German princes by his Spanish troops, 
but they felt as if a foreigner had conquered them, 
and hated him. Almost every mountain pass had 
a robber noble, who tormented travelers, and 
ground down his vassals by his. exactions. The 
nobles despised learning, and were terrible drunk- 
ards and gamesters, so that their diets and camps 
were a scandal and a joke to other nations, and 
they were mostly rude and boorish, while the 
burghers and merchants whom they despised were 
well-read, thoughtful, cultivated people. Each 
prince and each city had fixed which form of doc- 
trine should prevail. In the Lutheran ones the 
lands of the bishoprics and abbeys had been seized 
but in some of these the nunneries were kept up 
and called Chapters, as a home for ladies of noble 
birth, who took no vows, but enjoyed the estates. 

Ferdinand would gladly have improved matters, 
but he was already an old man when he became 
Emperor, and he died in the year of 1564. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

MAXIMILIAN II 1564. 

TV /TAXIMILIAN II. was thirty-seven years of 
-L * J- age when he succeeded his father. He was 
a kindly, warm-hearted man, beloved by all, and he 
allowed so much freedom to the Lutherans that he 
was sometimes accused of being one himself. He 
could speak six languages with ease, and King 
Henry III. of France declared that he was the most 
accomplished gentleman lie ever met. He was so 
industrious that his chancellor said that if he had 
not been Emperor he would have been the best of 
chancellors, and lie was always ready to hear the 
petitions of the meanest of his subjects. His Bohe- 
mian subjects said of him that thejf were as happy 
under him as if he had been their father, and all his 
people would have given the same character of 

him. 

.306 



Maximilian II. 



307 



Unfortunately, whatever he did in his own 
dominions of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, he 
held little power over the princes of the Empire, 




Maximilian ii. 

and they would not listen to his counsel. It had: 
become the custom of the Germans to go forth as 
soldiers, calling themselves Landsknechts, and 



308 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

hiring themselves out to fight, no matter in what 
cause, provided they were well paid, and got plenty 
of plunder. This took them away from their proper 
work ; there were not men enough left to till the 
ground, and such as came back were horribly idle, 
lawless, and Avicked, unfit for a peaceful life. 
Maximilian tried to get the Diet to forbid the men 
of Germany from taking service with other princes, 
but he could not succeed, and Germans fought all 
through the wars in France and the Netherlands. 
However, the Diet agreed with the Kaisar in trying 
to put down the horrible lawlessness of some of the 
barons. There Avas a knight called Wilhelm of 
Grumbach Avho had ravaged Franconia Avith fire 
and sword, and had ended by murdering the Bishop 
of Wurtzburg. He had been put under the ban of 
the Empire, but Friedrich of Saxony, son of the 
deprived Elector, Johann Friedrich, thought proper 
to give him shelter at Gotha, and for seven years 
the edict could not be performed, but at last the 
Elector August came before Gotha Avith an army, 
and forced it to surrender, Avhen Grumbach, after 
being barbarously tortured, Avas torn to pieces by 
wild horses, and Friedrich Avas imprisoned, and de- 
prived of his lands, which were divided betAveen 
his two sons. 



Maximilian II. 309 

Maximilian was a firm ally of Queen Elizabeth, 
and there was a plan at one time of one of his many 
sons marrying her, but this came to nothing. His 
daughter Elizabeth married Charles IX. of France, 
and was quite broken-hearted by the cruelties she 
saw at his court. Maximilian himself showed the 
greatest grief and indignation at the Massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, and always stood up for what was 
just and merciful. 

His wife was Maria, daughter to Charles V., for 
the Austrian princes were far too apt to marry 
their cousins, and having no infusion of fresh spirit, 
the family became duller and duller, and none of 
the five sons of Maximilian were equal to himself. 
The third of them, who bore the same name as his 
father, was elected King of Poland by one party, 
but another party chose Siegmund of Sweden, and 
defeated him. Afterwards he was made Grand 
Master of the remains of the Teutonic Order. The 
estates of that Order in Eastern Prussia could not 
be recovered from the Elector of Brandenburg, to 
whom the Grand Master Albrecht had left them, 
for the Protestant princes mustered very strongly 
in the Diet, and would not give up a fragment of 
the Church lands which they had seized, and the 



810 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Emperor was determined not to go to war with 
them. 

He was able to avoid war everywhere but in 
Hungary, where Johann Siegmimd, Prince uf 
Transylvania, attacked him, and was not ashamed 
to ask the aid of the terrible Sultan, Solyman the 
Magnificent. The enormous army of Turks ad- 
vanced up the Danube, meaning to take Vienna 
itself, but they stopped to take the little town of 
Zagreth. Here the brave Count Zrini with 1500 
men held out bravely. The place was in the 
middle of a bend of the river, and had strong walls, 
so that the Turks had to throw in earth to make 
roads, and raise mounds on which to plant their 
cannon. Even when they had battered down part 
of the walls, they were beaten back in nineteen 
assaults before at last they gained a footing in the 
outer part of the fortress. Only six hundred men 
were left within, and Count Zrini, seeing all hope 
gone, took the keys of the place, and with his 
father's sword in his hand sallied out at the head 
of his men, hoping to cut their way through the 
enemy. He was slain bravely fighting, and his 
men were driven back into the castle, and were 
there killed, all but a very few, whose wonderful 
bravery struck even the Turkish soldiers. They 



Maximilian II. 811 

had stopped the Turks for a whole month, and 
their constancy was the saving of their country, for 
the long delay in the unwholesome marshes caused 
an illness, of which the Sultan, Solyman died, and 
thus the invasion was prevented. Peace was made 
with the new Sultan, Selim, and so honorable was 
the Emperor, that when a great league Avas made 
against the Turks by Spain, Venice, and the Pope, 
he would not join it, saying that a Christian could 
never be justified in breaking an oath. The allies 
defeated the Turkish fleet in the glorious sea-fight 
of Lepanto, and crushed their strength, but Maxi- 
milian forbade the Hungarians to make any great 
show of rejoicing, as he said it would be ungenerous 
to insult the Turks in their distress. 

The crown of Poland was vacant again, and 
Maximilian proposed to the Poles to choose his 
third son, Ernst, a good, upright man, but with 
such low spirits that he was hardly ever seen to 
smile. The Poles would not have him, and chose 
instead the Emperor himself, a Avise choice, for he 
was so much beloved that he was called by the 
Germans after the Emperor Titus, "the delight of 
the world." 

Ernst's melancholy seems to have been inherited 
from the poor crazed Juana of Spain, grandmother 



312 Young Folks' Histofy of Crermany. 

to botli Maximilian and his wife, and it often 
showed itself in both the Austrian and Spanish 
lines. Maximilian himself, though bright and 
cheerful, had never been strong, and he died sud- 
denly while holding a diet at Regensburg, in his 
fiftieth year, on the 12th of October, 1576. His 
wife, with one of his daughters, then went into a 
convent in Spain. He had had sixteen children, of 
whom nine lived to grow up. 




CHAPTER XXXIL 

RUDOLF II., 1576-1612. 

THE weakest and least sane of all the sons of 
Maximilian was the eldest, Rudolf, who had 
already been chosen King of the Romans, and suc- 
ceeded his father in 1576. He . was, however, in 
Ms early youth full of liveliness and cheerfulness, 
living, as his brothers said, too familiarly with peo- 
ple of all ranks ; and he was a man of much read- 
ing, knowing man} 7- languages, and having a great 
turn for natural science, so that he formed botanical 
gardens, and collected a menagerie of foreign ani- 
mals. He began the great museum of gems, 
statues, and pictures at Vienna, and encouraged 
learning, especially in Bohemia, where there were 
such good schools that most of the burghers were 
familiar with the old Greek and Latin poets. He 
also was very fond of chemistry and astronomy, 



314 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

and brought to his court the two men who had 
gone the farthest in the study of the stars, Tycho 
Brahe, a Swede, and Kepler, a Wurtemburgher. 

In those days, however, chemistry and astron- 
omy had two false sisters — alchemy, an endeavor 
to find the philosopher's stone, and therewith make 
gold ; and astrology, which was supposed to fore- 
tell a man's fate by calculating the influences of 
the planets which stood foremost in the sky at his 
birth. These two vain studies seem to have turned 
Rudolf's head. An astrologer told him that he 
would die by the hand of one of the next generation 
of his own kindred ; and to prevent this murderer 
from being born he would neither marry himself 
nor let any of his five brothers marry, except Al- 
brecht, who would have seemed the most unlikely 
of all, since he was a Cardinal. As he had never 
really taken Holy Orders, he was chosen as the 
husband of Isabel Clara Eugenia, the daughter of 
Philip II. of Spain, and sent with her to govern 
Flanders, and what remained of the Netherlands 
after Holland and the other six provinces had 
broken loose from Philip II. Fear of the possible 
murder, however, grew on Rudolf, and he ceased 
to go out or hold audiences with his people, attend- 



Rudolf II. 317 

ing to nothing but his alchemy and his horses, of 
which he had a magnificent collection. 

In the meantime things fell into disorder, and 
began to work towards a civil war. Germany was 
divided into three great parties — the Roman 
Catholics, of whom the chief was Maximilian, Duke 
of Bavaria ; the Lutherans, whose principal leaders 
were the Electors, Johann Siegmund of Branden- 
burg and Johann George of Saxony ; and the Cal- 
vinists, under Prince Christian of Anhalt and the 
Pfalzgraf or Elector Palatine of the Rhine. 

The free city of Donauwerth was chiefly Prot- 
estant, but there was a Benedictine abbey within 
it, where the monks were undisturbed, on condition 
that they should make no processions. For many 
years they had refrained, but when the Rogation 
tide of 1605 came round, they went forth, as of old, 
to sing litanies and bless the crops. The magis- 
trates stopped them, sent back the banners to the 
abbey, but let the procession go on. The Bishop 
of Wurtzburg complained to the Aulic Council, 
and a citation was sent to the magistrates, which, 
however, was placed in the Abbot's hands, and he 
did not show it till he found he was not to be al- 
lowed another procession. The magistrates tried 
to keep the peace, but the people had been worked 



318 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

up into a fury, and assaulted a funeral procession, 
destroying the banners and driving back the monks. 
On this Donauwerth was laid under the ban of the 
Empire, and the Duke of Bavaria was sent to carry 
it out. He did not act with violence, but marched 
into the city, which was able to make no resistance, 
restored the chief church to the Catholics, and 
united the city to his own duchy, to which it had 
formerly belonged. 

The whole reformed party was offended, and 
formed into a great league. The Lutherans seem 
chiefly to have meant to keep all they had taken 
from the Church, but the Calvinists had hopes of 
depriving the House of Austria of the Empire. 
Maximilian of Bavaria formed a Catholic League 
in self-defence. 

In the midst of these disturbances the Duke of 
Cleves died, and his duchy was disputed between 
the sons of his two sisters — the Elector of Bran- 
denburg and young Duke Wolfgang of Neuburg. 
They were both Lutherans, and Wolfgang, at a con- 
ference between them, said the best way of settling 
the matter would be for him to marry his rival's 
daughter. The Elector was so angry at this pro- 
posal that he boxed the young man's ears, where- 
upon Wolfgang, in his anger, became a Roman 



Rudolf II. 319 

Catholic, and asked for help from Spain and Bava- 
ria. On the other hand the Elector became a 
Calvinist, and was more active in the affairs of the 
union. The Emperor tried to interfere, but in vain, 
and the country of Julich and Cleves was divided 
between the two for a time. 

In the meantime Rodolfs neglect of business 
had led to such confusion in both Austria and 
Hungary that ihey revolted against him, and forced 
him to give them up to his brother Matthias in 
1606. Only Bohemia was left to him, and he hoped 
to keep that by putting forth a Letter of Majesty 
granting freedom of worship and equal rights to 
the Hussites and Protestants, but he allowed his 
cousin Leopold, Bishop of Passau, to raise an army 
in the Catholic interest. The Bohemians, seeing 
that he could not be trusted, called in Matthias, 
and deposed Rudolf, though they still allowed him 
his palace at Prague, where he could go on with 
his experiments with Tycho Brahe, who though a 
great astronomer, was as superstitious as himself. 
There was a comet in 1607, which the Emperor 
thought had come on his account. His fears of 
assassination increased. He would never go to 
church, or anywhere else except to his stables, and 
thither he had a passage made with oblique windows 



320 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

in the thickness of the wall to prevent being shot, 
and the whole lined with black marble, to show 
the reflection of any one who came near him. His 
own counsellors and foreign envoys had to disguise 
themselves as grooms to obtain a hearing, and he 
sometimes flew into violent rages on finding them 
out, while his fits of melancholy were worse than ever. 

However, he roused himself to hold a meeting of 
the Electors at Nuremburg, told them how he was 
stripped and impoverished, and begged for a grant 
of revenues from the Empire. They showed him 
little pity, saying it was his own fault, and desiring 
to have a diet summoned for Electing any one of 
his brothers King of the Romans. This he felt to 
be a step towards taking away his last crown, and 
he kept on putting off" and off the calling of the 
diet till the Electors lost patience, and summoned 
it for themselves. 

This was the last blow. His depression increased, 
and he pined away till he found himself dying ; 
then he brightened up, declaring that he felt as 
happy as when in his j^outh he had come home to 
Germany after a visit to Spain, for now he was 
going beyond the reach of change and sorrow. He 
died in the sixtieth year of his age, and the thirty- 
seventy of his reign, in the year 1612. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

MATTHIAS, 1612-1619. 

THE new Emperor, Matthias, was a good and 
upright man, who had only taken part 
against his elder brother because he saw that other- 
wise the three hereditary states would be lost to 
the House of Hapsburg. So soon as he had freed 
himself from Rudolf's fancies, he had married his 
cousin, Anne of the Tyrol, whom he loved most 
tenderly, but he had no children — indeed the only 
one of all Maximilian's sixteen children who ever 
had a child was Anne, whose only child was Philip 
III. of Spain, and the Germans and Austrians alike 
would never have borne to pass under another 
Spanish King. 

The fittest heir would thus be Ferdinand, Duke of 
Styria, who was son to Charles, a younger son of 
the Emperor, Ferdinand II. He had lost his father 
321 



322 



Young Folks' History of Germany. 



very early, and had been bred up by his Bavarian 
uncle and Jesuit teachers, so that he was a very 
devout and conscientious man, but not clever — and 




MXTTHIAS. 



cold, shy, and grave. When, in 1596, he first came 
to take possession of his duchy, he found all the 
Styrians Protestants, and not one person in Gratz 



Matthias. 323 

would receive the Holy Communion with him on 
Easter-day. He was so much shocked that he made 
a pilgrimage to Rome, and vowed to restore his 
duchy to the Church. He brought back a band of 
Capuchin Friars, and between their teaching and 
his own management he so entirely changed the 
profession of the Styrians that, in 1603, there were 
40,000 at the Easter Mass. 

This did not make the notion of him welcome to 
the Protestants. The Bohemians in especial had 
been meaning to keep quiet as long as Matthias 
lived, but on his death they meant to choose either 
the Elector of Saxony or the Elector Palatine. 
But in 1617 their diet was called together, and they 
were told that they had no right to choose any 
stranger, but must accept Ferdinand of Styria, to 
whom Matthias wished to resign the crown of Bo- 
hemia. They were taken by surprise, and did as 
they were bidden, though they believed their crown 
to be elective, and many of them were old Huss- 
ites. 

Ferdinand doubted whether, as a good Catholic, 
he ought to swear to the Letter of Majesty granted 
by Rudolf, which made the Protestants equal with 
the Catholics, but the Jesuits told him that though 
it might have been wrong to grant it, it could not 



324 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

be wrong to accept it as part of the law of the land, 
and as he walked in state to his coronation, he said 
to one of his friends, " I am glad to have won this 
crown without any pangs of conscience." 

However, he did not think himself bound to 
more than keeping the strictest letter of the law, 
while he believed it his duty to restore Bohemia to 
the Church. He banished all the Protestants and 
Hussite school-masters, founding two Convents of 
Capuchins and three Jesuit Colleges, and bringing 
in as many of his Catholics to settle in the country 
as possible. It was the plan that had succeeded in 
Styria, and there was very little resistance among 
the people in Bohemia. He was also elected King 
of Hungary, and there crowned, and a diet was 
soon to be assembled to appoint him King of the 
Romans. 

His two chief Bohemian counsellers were Slavata 
and Martinitz, both zealous Catholics, whom he 
left as regents when he went to Germany ; and on 
the opposite side was Count Thurm, a strong Lu- 
theran, who hated the House of Hapsburg. A 
Lutheran church was pulled down, and the congre- 
gation was shut out of another because they did 
not come under the head of the Letter of Majesty. 
On this, Thurm and his friends sent a remonstrance 



Matthias. 325 

to the Emperor, but Matthias justified all that his 
cousin had done, and they became afraid of abso- 
lute persecution. Thurm resolved to destroy the 
rule of the House of Hapsburg in Bohemia, and to 
begin by the death of the regents. 

On the 23rd of May, 1618, a whole troop of 
Hussite and Lutheran armed nobles tramped up 
into the Council Chamber where Martinitz and 
Slavata were sitting, and reproached them with 
having been the authors of the Emperor's letter. 
A few hot words passed. " Let us follow the old 
custom, and hurl them from the window," some 
one cried ; and they were dragged to a window 
seventy feet above the ditch of the Castle of Prague. 
Martinitz begged for a priest. " Commend thy 
soul to God," was the answer ; " we will have no 
Jesuit scoundrels here ; " and he was hurled out, 
uttering a praj^er of which the murderers caught a 
few words, and one cried, " Let us see whether his 
Mary will help him." Slavata and the secretary 
were also hurled out, but, looking from the win- 
dow, the man's next cry was, "His Mary has 
helped him." For there was a pile of waste paper 
just below, which had broken the fall, and all three 
crawled away unhurt. 

This Defenestration, as the Bohemians called it, 



326 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

was in truth the beginning of the Thirty Years" 
War Avhich ravaged Germany, and threw back all 
progress and improvement all the time it lasted, 
and .bred some of the most savage and lawless sol- 
diers who ever drew sword. The Hussites began 
it in real fear for their religion, and also feeling 
that the nation had been cheated by the House of 
Austria of the power of electing their king, and 
they hoped for help from the Lutheran and Cal- 
vinist princes who had any quarrel with that 
family. They wrote a letter justifying their treat- 
ment of the two regents by the fate of Jezebel, and 
raised almost all Bohemia against Ferdinand. 

The Emperor Matthias had enough of the spirit 
of his father to wish to win them back by gentle 
means, and his chief adviser, Cardinal Klesel, was 
fully of the same mind. They tried to hold back 
Ferdinand, who wanted to take speedy vengeance, 
and was supported by his former guardian, the 
Archduke Maximilian, and the Jesuits. When 
they found that the Emperor would not send 
troops from the Spanish Netherlands to reduce 
Bohemia, these two princes caused Klesel to be 
seized, stripped of his robes, and sent off a prisoner 
to a castle in the Tyrol. Matthias was ill in bed 
with gout, and when his brother went and told 



Rudolf II. 



327 



him what had been done, his wrath and grief were 
so great that he could not trust himself to speak, 
but thrust the bed-clothes into his mouth till he 
was almost choked. He was too feeble and old to 
hinder Ferdinand from sending Spanish and Flem- 
ish troops into Bohemia, but Count Thurm was at 




FRIEDRICH V 



the head of ten thousand insurgents, and had allied 
himself with Bethlem Gabor, Waiwode of Transyl- 
vania, and with the Protestant Union, at the head 
of winch was the Elector Palatine, Friedrich, the 



328 Young Folks' History of Grermany. 

husband of Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of 
England. 

The Catholic Germans were for the most part of 
the same mind as the Emperor, ready to do any- 
thing to prevent war, and Matthias getting better, 
fixed a meeting at Egra to try to come to some 
agreement, but his wife died just then, and he sank 
into a state of depression, comparing his cousin's 
usage of him to his own treatment of his brother 
Rudolf, and grieving over the miseries he saw 
coming on the Empire. He died before the con- 
ference could take place, on the 20th of March, 
1619. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE BBVOLT OP BOHEMIA. 
FERDINAND II., 1619-1621. 

AFFAIRS were in a veiy unpromising state for 
Ferdinand when Matthias died. The Prot- 
estant princes of the Union were unwilling to 
make him Emperor, nor would the Bohemians 
accept his promise to renew the Letter of Majesty, 
but Count Thurm, by favor of the numerous 
Austrian Protestants, marched up to the very walls 
of Vienna. 

Ferdinand sent his wife and children away to 
the Tyrol, and waited at Vienna himself with only 
three hundred men whom he could depend upon. 
The Austrians meant to profit by his distress, and 
insisted that he should accept a charter which 
united them with the Bohemians, and made them 



330 Young Folks'. History of Germany. 

far too strong for his reforms. He threAV himself 
on his knees, and prayed for aid to stand firm 
against what his conscience forbade, and he thought 
he heard a voice in answer, " Fear not, I will not 
forsake thee." 

The Bohemian cannon were firing on his palace,, 
and sixteen Austrian nobles rushed in on him, 
calling on him to sign the charter, telling him that 
the city had revolted, and that if he did not sign 
he should be shut up in a convent, and his children 
should be bred up Protestants. One noble even 
took him roughly by the button of his coat, saying, 
" Sign it, Nandel ! " but he never lost his firmness, 
and at that moment a trumpet was heard outside. 
A troop of Flemish horse, sent to Ferdinand's aid 
by the Archduke Albert, had entered by a gate 
not guarded by Thurm, and he was rescued. 

The Bohemians retreated, and proceeded to hold 
a diet at Prague, where they elected the Elector 
Palatine, Friedrich, as their king. He was at that 
time at the Diet of the Empire. The three Prot- 
estant Electors had much rather not have chosen 
Ferdinand, but as they could agree on no one else, 
the three Archbishops led them, and there was no 
vote against him. 

The Elector Palatine was advised against accept- 




FERDINAND II, 



Ferdinand II. 333 

ing the Bohemian crown by his father-in-law, James 
L, who said he must not reckon on English aid in 
meddling with other people's rights, and his own 
mother was of the same mind. He himself was 
weak and perplexed. "If I refuse," he said, "I 
shall be accused of cowardice ; if I accept, of ambi- 
tion. Decide as I may, all is over for me and my 
country." But his wife, Elizabeth Stewart, thought 
acceptance a duty, and taunted him with having 
married a king's daughter without spirit to act as 
a king, and, half distracted, he yielded, and set off 
from his beautiful home in Heidelberg amid the 
tears of all his people. On the 4th of November, 
1619, he was crowned at Prague, where he was 
received with great joy. The ladies sent Elizabeth 
sacks of all sorts of cakes, and an ebony cradle 
inlaid with silver for her son Rupert, her third 
child, who was born the next month. But Fried- 
rich was such a Calvinist as soon to offend the 
Hussites, who had kept all the old ornaments on 
their churches, and had the Catholic service in 
their own tongue. He also quarreled with Count 
Thurm, and gave command of the army to Prince 
Christian of Anhalt. 

"Here is a prince in a fine labyrinth," said the 
Pope, and "He will be only a winter king," said 



834 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

the Jesuits. And in the spring the Flemish army 
entered the Palatinate, and horribly ravaged the 
beautiful Rhineland, so that the Electress dowager 
and. her grandchildren could hardly escape. Max- 
imilian of Bavaria, at the head of an army of 
his OAvn people and of Austrians, entered Bohemia, 
and Count Tilly, the chief Austrian general, en- 
camped on the White Hill above Prague. It was 
a Sunday morning, and the Gospel read for the day 
was — "Render unto Csesar the things that are 
Caesar's." The soldiers took it as a good omen, 
and Tilly gave battle as soon as mass was over. 

Friedrich was at dinner with the English envoys 
when he heard that his men were flying, and 
Anhalt fled into the town bare-headed to say that 
all was lost. The gates were opened, a carriage 
brought to the door, Friedrich and Elizabeth hur- 
ried into it, little Rupert was thrown into the bot- 
tom of it, and they drove away, to find a refuge at 
last at the Hague, among the Dutch. The Bohe- 
mians were at the mercy of the Catholic League 
under Maximilian and Tilly. The whole country 
was ravaged, multitudes of peasants were slain, the 
nobles were beheaded, and all the old Hussite 
churches given to the Catholics, while the ministers 
were banished. Priests, friars, and Jesuits were 



Ferdinand II 335 

sent to instruct the people, and before the end of 
the reign the Hussite and Lutheran doctrine had 
been trampled out in Bohemia. 

Friedrich of the Rhine was put to the ban of the 
Empire, and Maximilian of Bavaria was made 
Elector in his stead. He might have saved the 
remains of his County Palatine if he would have 
taken the advice of King James, who tried to me- 
diate for him, and have ceased to call himself King 
of Bohemia ; but he would not do this, and Count 
Peter Mansfeld still held two Bohemian towns for 
him, and having no money, his soldiers lived by 
horrible pillage and rapine. The Protestant Union, 
though they had disapproved of the attack on Bo- 
hemia, did not choose to lose an Elector from their 
number, and undertook the defence of Friedrich. 
Moreover, Elizabeth was so beautiful and spirited, 
that the young princes who saw her grew ardent 
in her cause, and the young Christian of Bruns- 
wick called himself her knight, and wore her glove 
in his helmet, with the inscription. " For God and 
for her." He was a younger son of the Duke of 
Brunswick, but a Lutheran, and had been provided 
for with a bishopric for the. sake of the estates, 
though he was nothing but a soldier. But this 



336 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

was the way the Lutheran princes dealt with the 
old Bishoprics. 

With Tilly commanding the Catholic Germans 
and Spinola the Flemings on the Emperor's side, 
and Anhalt, Mansfeld, and Brunswick the Protest- 
ants, the war began to rage on the Palatinate on 
the banks of the Rhine. Tilly was a Hungarian of 
peasant birth, brave and honest, but very fierce and 
rude. He went to battle in a green slashed coat, 
and slouched hat with a red feather, and was brutal 
with his soldiers, and unmerciful to the enemy. 
This thirty years' war was one of the most horrible 
ever known. The soldiers were chiefly men 
trained to fight as a trade from their youth up, 
coming from every nation, hiring themselves out 
for a certain time, and serving only for pay and 
plunder, with no real feeling for their cause, and 
no pity for man, woman, or child. Their generals 
looked to maintain them by pillage, and to wear 
out the enemy by ruining his country. " Burning- 
masters " were officers in their armies, and horror 
and misery came wherever they went. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

GUSTAF ADOLF AND WALLENSTEIN. 
FERDINAND II., 1621-1634. 

A FTER Tilly had defeated Mansfeld and 

-*- ^- Christian of Brunswick, the Avar seemed 
dying away, but Christian II., King of Denmark, 
took up the cause of the German Protestants, and 
entered Saxony, joined Mansfeld, who had raised 
another army. The Elector Johann George would 
not join them, but he would not help the Emperor, 
because Ferdinand resisted the giving away of 
Bishoprics to young Lutheran princes. 

Maximilian of Bavaria and Count Tilly were 
ready to fight for the Empire and the Church, but 
Ferdinand wanted a general and an army more 
entirely his own, and yet he had no money to raise 
troops. Just then there came forward Count 
337 



338 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Albrecht von Waldstein, or Wallenstein, as he 
came to be called, a Bohemian noble, who as a lad 
had become a Roman Catholic, but had more faith 
in astrology than in any religion, and could be led 
to anything that he thought his star directed. He 
had become very rich by buying up the estates for- 
feited by the Bohemian nobles, and he came to the 
Emperor and offered to raise an army of 50,000 
men, and make it support itself, not by plunder, 
but by forcing contributions from the states it oc- 
cupied. 

Ferdinand thought this not so bad as plunder, and 
consented, creating Wallenstein Duke of Friedland. 
He soon raised his army, chiefly from disbanded 
men of the Protestant army. He beat Mansfeld 
first on the Elbe, and the King of Denmark on the 
Lutter. Then the duchy of Holstein, which be- 
longed to Denmark, but was part of the German 
Empire, was taken from the King, and Wallenstein 
was rewarded by being made Duke of Mecklenburg 
and Generalissimo of the Empire by sea and land. 
Afterwards, he tried to enter Stralsund on the Bal- 
tic, a free city, and one of the Hanse towns, and 
when he found the gates closed, he besieged it, de- 
claring, " I will have the city, though it were bound 
with chains of adamant to heaven." The magis- 



Ferdinand II 341 

trates appealed to the Emperor, who commanded 
him to give up the siege, but he paid no attention, 
and went on with the attack. However, the Kings 
of Sweden and Denmark sent aid to the Stralsun- 
ders, and he had to retire, after having lost many 
men. 

He had grown so proud and powerful that his 
state and splendor surpassed those of the princes, 
and the Catholic League, AAdth the Elector of Ba- 
varia at its head, pressed Ferdinand to dismiss him 
for his disobedience and presumption in attacking 
a free city, declaring that unless this was done, 
they would not choose the Emperor's son King of 
the Romans. 

The French minister Richelieu, who Avanted to 
ruin Ferdinand, was playing a double game, per- 
suading the Emperor to give up his general, and at 
the same time advising the princes against electing 
young Ferdinand, while he tried to stir up fresh 
enemies for the House of Austria. The Duke of 
Friedland then retired to his estates, where he 
lived more splendidly than most kings of his time. 
He was waited on by nobles, and had sixty high- 
born pages and fifty life-guards waiting in his own 
chamber ; his table was never laid for less than a 
hundred ; and when he traveled it was with sixty 



342 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

carriages and one hundred wagons. He hated 
noise so much, that when he was at Prague he had 
chains put across the streets near his palace that 




GUSTAF ADOLF. 



nothing might disturb him, and his study, where he 
spent much time in observing the stars, and draw- 
ing omens from them, was a wonderful place. His 



Ferdinand II. 343 

manner was blunt, short, and proud, but there was 
something about him that, together with his mag- 
nificent gifts, bound men's hearts to him. 

Ferdinand, having thus gained the victory, insis- 
ted that the Church property belonging to bishop- 
rics and abbeys should be given up. Again the 
Protestants felt themselves aggrieved, and their 
defence was taken up by Gustaf Adolf, King of 
Sweden, the noblest man and best soldier of the 
age, and one of its truest Christians. 

He kept his army in perfect order, and would 
allow no plunder or violence, taking care that his 
men should be well fed, clothed, and lodged, 
and giving them chaplains, who read prayers and 
taught them. He came in the spirit of one who 
hoped to work a deliverance for his religion, and as 
he entered Pomerania in 1630, all were amazed at 
his orderly army, paying its way and doing no harm. 
The Catholics called him the Snow-king, who 
would melt as he came southwards, and Tilly 
marched to oppose him. 

The free town of Magdeburg was Protestant. 
Tilly besieged it, and took it by assault before 
Guataf could come to save it. Then there was the 
most horrible sack ever known, while the savage 
soldiers murdered, robbed, drank, rioted, and burnt, 



344 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

more like fiends than human beings, and Tilly 
called this their reward. The fire drove them out 
at last, when out of 40,000 inhabitants only 800 
were left. 

These atrocities horrified all Germany. Many 
princes who had doubted before now joined Gustaf, 
and he fought a great battle at Leipsic with Tilly, 
and routed him completely. It was the old gen- 
eral's first defeat out of thirty battles, and it 
opened Gustaf's way into south Germany. March- 
ing towards Bavaria, he met Tilly again, on the 
banks of the Lech, and was again victorious, Tilly 
being killed by a shot in the leg. Gustaf would 
have restored Friedrich to Heidelberg on condition 
that he would give Lutherans equal rights with 
Calvinists, but this he Avould not do, and three 
months later he died of a fever. 

All the free towns received Gustaf joyfully, and 
he marched into Bavaria, while Maximilian fled to 
Regensburg. At Munich, the burghers received 
the conqueror on their knees, but he bade them 
rise, saying, " Kneel to God, not man." He al- 
lowed no plunder, and left the Elector's palace and 
stores of pictures untouched. All he wanted was 
the cannon, and these were found buried under- 




DEATH OF WATVLEXSTEIN. 



Ferdinand II. 347 

ground, and the largest of all stuffed to the muzzle 
with gold pieces. 

Meantime the Elector of Saxony was overrun- 
ning Bohemia, but Wallenstein had been roused to 
take the command again, and he hunted the Elec- 
tor back to Saxony. There Gustaf came to his 
help, and at Lutzen, in November, 1632, these two 
great generals fought a great battle. The Swede 
was the victor, but Avas killed in the midst of the 
fight, it is much feared by the treachery of a Ger- 
man Duke. A monument, called the Stone of the 
Swede, marks where he fell — the best and great- 
est man of his time. Young Duke Bernard of 
Saxe Weimar, a brave and good young man, 
took the command, but he could not keep Gustaf 's 
discipline, and his army was soon as great a scourge 
as Mansf eld's had been. 

Wallenstein had gone into Bohemia, and there 
would obey no orders either from the Emperor or 
the Elector of Bavaria. When he was reproved, 
he made all his chief officers sign a bond to hold 
fast by him whatever happened. This was flat 
treason, and some, though signing it, sent informa- 
tion to the Emperor, and then left him. He now 
began to deal with the other side, and offered to 
give the city of Egra up to the Protestants. Bern- 



348 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

hard would have nothing to do with such a traitor, 
but the other allies listened, and Egra was just 
about to be delivered up by Wallenstien, when six 
Scottish and Irish officers of his guards resolved to 
hinder the deed by his death. Just as he had gone 
to bed, they broke into his rooms, as he met them 
at the door he was slain at once by six halberts in 
his breast, on the 25th of February, 1634. 




CHAPTER XXXVI. 

FERDINAND II., 1634-1037. 

FERDINAND III 1637. 

ON the death of Wallenstein, the command of 
the Catholic army was given to the Em- 
peror's son Ferdinand, who had been chosen King 
of Hungary and Bohemia, and to his aid came the 
Governor of the Low Countries, a son of the King 
of Spain, commonly called the Cardinal Infant, 
who, church dignitary though he was, was a brave 
captain. Together, they gave the Protestants a 
terrible defeat at Nordlingen, and the party was 
beginning to fall to pieces. The Germans hated 
the Swedes, the Swedes were jealous of Bernhard 
of Saxe Weimar, and all began to consider of peace, 
for the war was growing more dreadful than ever. 
The soldiers on both sides were worse than savages, 
and found their pleasure in torture for its own sake, 
sticking needles into the miserable people who fell 



350 Young Folks' History of Qermany. 

into their hands, sawing their flesh to the bone, 
scalding them with hot water, or hunting them 
with dogs. Whole villages in Brandenburg and 
Saxony lay utterly waste, with no living creature 
in them but the famished dogs that prowled 




BERNHARD OF SAXB WEIMAR 



round the desolate hearths, and along the road 
lay dead bodies with a little grass in their mouths. 
The English Ambassador on his way to Prague 
saw many such sights, and fed many starving 
wretches on Ms way. One poor little village which 



Ferdinand II 351 

lie passed through had been pillaged twenty-eight 
times in two j^ears ! 

He was going to a conference at Prague, where 
there was an attempt to make peace, but every one 
was displeased with the terms, and the French, who 
had been hoping all along to get something for 
themselves out of the misfortunes of Germany, and 
had set their hearts on the province of Elsass, de- 
clared war against the Empire just before the peace 
was signed between Ferdinand and the princes of 
the Empire. Bernhard of Saxe Weimar was invi- 
ted to Paris, and much admired and caressed. He 
was made a general both in the French and in the 
Swedish armies, and now the war was not between 
Catholic and Protestant Germans, but between 
Germans on the one hand, and Swedes and French 
on the other; for the Swedes were fighting for 
the duchy of Pomerania, which had been promised 
to the Elector of Brandenburg. 

In the midst died Ferdinand II., on the 15th of 
February, 1637. He was a good and devout man, 
but narrow-minded, and so much devoted to the 
Jesuits and Capuchins that his confessor said of 
him, that if an angel and a monk gave him contrary 
advice, he believed he would take the monk's. He 
was most kind and charitable, and would wait on 



352 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

beggars and lepers with his own hands, and he was 
much beloved by his Catholic subjects. 

His son, Ferdinand III., was very like him. His 
great love was for keeping accounts, and he did 
save a great deal of money, but he wrote such a 
bad hand that when he sent orders to his generals 
they could always avoid obeying them, by declaring 
they could not read them. His reign began in the 
midst of the weary old war, the Swedes fighting for 
Pomerania, and the French for Elsass. Bernhard 
of Saxe Weimer took Brisach, fancying Elsass 
would be given to him, and he was angered and 
disappointed when he found this was the last 
thing the French thought of. He set off to make 
his way to the Swedes, who were overrunning 
Brandenburg, but on the way he caught a fever, 
and died in 1639, when only thirty-six years old, 
worn out by the miserable war, and grief at the 
atrocities he could not prevent. In the midst of 
his illness he heard that the enemy were attacking 
the camp, and rising from his sick-bed, he mounted 
his horse and drove them back. 

All the Germans, Catholic and Protestant, were 
united now, and they had the Spaniards to help 
them, but the French and Swedes were both under 
able generals. The Swedish Count Banier Avon so 



Ferdinand III. 353 

many victories that six hundred standards of his 
taking are still in the Cathedral at Stockholm. 
Hungary was attacked by George Bagotsky of 
Transylvania, and Germany by the French, who 
won two terrible battles at Friburg and Nordlin- 
gen, and had orders to march into Bavaria and lay 
the country waste. 

This threat was to force the Elector Maximilian 
to make a separate peace with France. He was 
the only one left of all the princes who had been 
living at the beginning of the war, and had upheld 
the cause of the Emperor all through, but he could 
not give up his country to the savage soldiers, and 
he signed a truce. The Emperor, losing his help, 
was in greater straits than ever, the Swedes over- 
ran Bohemia, and one night broke into the Em- 
peror's camp, and killed the sentries before his tent. 
When the truce was over, Maximilian joined Fer- 
dinand again. The last great battle of the war 
was fought at Zusmarschenen, in 1648, with the 
Swedes, who again gained a great victory. Bava- 
ria was overrun and laid waste, and in Bohemia, 
half Prague was taken by them. 

At Prague the war had begun in 1618, at Prague 
it ended in 1648. Germany was worn out ; it had 
only half the inhabitants it had at the begin- 



354 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

ning of the war. Many towns were in ruins, many 
villages deserts, trade was destroyed, misery every- 
where. The old Hanse League had fallen to pieces 
because the once wealthy cities could not pay their 
expenses. Peace must be made ; so a congress 
was held at Miinster in Westphalia, and attended 
by deputies from all parts of Europe. The two 
foreign enemies were bought off — France with 
Elsass, and Sweden with half Pomerania. The 
other half went to the Elector of Brandenburg, 
also the bishopric of Magdeburg ; Bavaria had the 
lower Palatinate, but the upper Palatinate was re- 
stored to Karl Ludwig, the son of the "Winter King, 
and brother of Rupert, who had been fighting for 
his uncle, Charles I., in England. At the same 
time Holland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland 
were declared free, and independent of the Empire. 
As to religious matters, all benefices that had 
been in Catholic or Protestant hands in 1624 were 
so to remain, the Imperial Council was to be of 
equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants, each 
prince might enforce what religion he pleased on 
his subjects, and Calvinism was as much recognized 
as Lutheranism. Nobody liked the terms of this 
peace, but everybody was so worn out that it was 
agreed to. Thenceforth, then, the great outlines were 



Ferdinand III. 357 

settled. Austria, Hungary, Tyrol, and Bohemia, 
being the hereditary lands of the Emperor, were 
Catholic, also Bavaria; while Brandenburg, Sax- 
ony, Brunswick, and most of the northern states 
and free cities were Protestant, and though the 
Empire still existed, all the princes were much 
more independent of it. Maximilian of Bavaria 
died in 1651, three years after the peace was 
signed, much respected for the faithful, honest part 
he had acted. The Emperor lived till 1657. He 
was not an able man, but he had never throughout 
his reign done a single act that he knew to be un- 
just. When he was sitting in his room, weak and 
ill, the nurses rushed in with his youngest child's 
cradle, because the nursery was on fire, and in their 
fright knocked the cradle against the wall, so that 
it was broken, and the child fell out. The shock 
so startled the father that he only lived an hour 
after, and the baby died of the fall a few months 
later. 



CHAPTER XXXVIL 



THE SIEGE OF VIENNA. 

LEOPOLD I., 1657-1687. 

r I ^HE eldest son of Ferdinand III. died before 
■*- his father, and the second, Leopold, was not 
eighteen, and had not yet been chosen King of the 
Romans. This gave Louis XIV. of France an op- 
portunity of trying to get himself elected to the 
Empire, and he gained over the three Electoral 
Archbishops and the Elector Palatine, who had he- 
come a Roman Catholic, but Friedrieh Wilhelm of 
Brandenburg, who is called the Great Elector, kept 
the others firm against France, and Leopold was 
chosen. He had been educated for the priesthood, 
and was a very devout and good man, most upright 
and careful, but he was far from clever or strong, 
and could not do great things, though he did little 

358 



Leopold I. 359 

things, very well. He was so good a player on the 
violin that his music master exclaimed — "What a 
pity your majesty is not a fiddler!" 

He was unfortunate, for Louis XIV. was on the 




LEOPOLD I. 



watch to gain all he could from Germany in its 
worn-out state, and was his enemy all his life, 



360 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

leaguing with the Rhineland princes against him, 
so that the war began again. 

The Great Elector saw through Louis's plans, 
and did his best to keep the Germans together, but 
the Swedes invaded his part of Pomerania, and he 
had to fight with them, when he not only drove 
them back, but seized most of what they had been 
granted at the peace of Minister. 

The Austrians were defeated on the Rhine and 
a peace was made at Nimeguen in 1678 for all 
Europe, when Brandenburg was forced to give up 
what he had gained in Pomei*ania. 

In spite of the peace, Louis declared that the 
great free city of Strasburg belonged to Elsass, and 
in 1681, while most of the burghers were away at 
the great fair of Frankfort, he seized the place, and 
kept it, bribing- the chief inhabitants to submit, and 
changing it as much as possible to be a French 
Roman Catholic instead of a German Protestant 
city. 

The Germans were furious, and would have 
made a league to recover it, but that the Elector of 
Brandenburg was so angry at having been deprived 
of his conquest in Pomerania that he would not 
join the Emperor in anything. Moreover, Louis 
stirred up the Hungarians against him, and indeed 



Leopold I. 361 

Leopold had been very harsh to the Protestants 
there, and had sent two hundred and fifty of their 
pastors to row as galley slaves at Naples, where the 
great Dutch Admiral Denyter obtained their free- 
dom. The Hungarians revolted, and after a few 
years called in to their aid Mahommed IV., the Sul- 
tan who sent his Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, at 
the head of 200,000 men, to invade Austria itself. 
Leopold and his family were obliged to take flight, 
and left Vienna to be defended by the governor, 
Count Starenburg, and its bishop, Kolonitsch, who 
had been a Knight of St. John, with a small, brave 
garrison. Outside was the Austrian army, under 
the Duke of Lorraine, with such an army as he 
could collect, and in it the young Prince Eugene, a 
cousin of the Duke of Savoy. He had been bred 
up at the French Court, but he had grown weary 
of its stiffness, and ran away with some other 
young men to fight against the Turks. Their let- 
ters were captured and opened, and were found to 
make game of the King. He never forgave what 
was said of him, and Eugene continued to serve 
the Emperor. But the Duke of Lorraine was not 
strong enough to fight the Turks, and Vienna was 
almost starved, so that the people had to eat dogs, 
rats, and cats (which they called roofpares). The 



362 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

only hope was in Poland, which for once had a 
really great man for its King, named John Sobieski. 
He was collecting his troops to come to the aid of 
the Austrians, and much were they longed for. 
The Turks outside had grown so weary of the siege 
that they were heard crying, " O ye infidels, if ye 
will not come yourselves, let us at least see your 
crests over the hills, for then the siege will be over, 
and we shall be free." 

To lessen their discontent, Kara Mustafa ordered 
an assault to be made. It was beaten off, but such 
was the loss of men, and such damage was done to 
the walls, that the Viennese thought their doom 
was come. On what they feared would be their 
last night, Starenburg sent up a volley of rockets 
from the tower of the Cathedral. Behold, it was 
answered by five more from Kohlenberg hill ! 
Then he knew that help was at hand, and sent a 
messenger to swim across the Danube by night 
with a letter to the Duke of Lorraine with these 
few words — "No time to be lost. No time indeed 
to be lost." 

Lorraine and Sobieski joined their forces, and 
burst down from the hills upon the enemy. When 
the Turks saw that all hope was vain, they mur- 



Leopold L 363 

dered every captive in their hands and all their own 
women who could not be carried away, but they 
left the babies, and five hundred of these poor little 
things were brought to the good Bishop, who had 
them baptized and brought up at his own expense. 
An immense quantity of stores were taken, among 
them so much coffee that it then became a common 
drink, and the first coffee-house in Europe was 
opened by the same man who had swum the 
Danube. 

Sobieski rode into Vienna with the people 
thronging round to kiss his horse and his sword, 
and calling him father and deliverer. Leopold was 
too proud to be grateful, and was half jealous, half 
afraid. He came into Vienna barefoot, with a 
taper in his hand, and went straight to the Cathe- 
dral, but he would not see Sobieski till he had 
made up his mind what ceremonies to observe. 
"How should an Emperor meet a King of 
Poland?" he asked. "With open arms," said the 
Duke of Lorraine. 

They did meet on horseback outside the city, 
and Leopold said a few cold words in Latin, but 
was so uncivil that the Polish army was very 
angry, and the Duke of Lorraine and his Germans 



364 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

were shocked — nor would Leopold allow the 
Polish sick to be brought into the city, nor those 
who died to be buried in the churchyards- How- 
ever, Sobieski still fought on, hunted the Turks 
back to the Danube, and together with the Duke 
of Lorraine gained a great victory at Gran, which 
delivered that city from the Turks after they had 
held it eighty years. 

The Emperor began to punish the Hungarians, 
whose revolt had caused this invasion. He set up 
a tribunal at Eperies, where a fierce Italian named 
Caraffa acted as judge, and sent out parties of horse 
to bring in all who were supposed not to wish well 
to the House of Austria. They were accused of 
conspiracy, tortured, and put to death so ruthlessly 
that the court was known as the Shambles of 
Eperies. After this, he took away from the Hun- 
garians the right of electing their king, declaring 
the crown to be hereditary in his own family, and 
sending his eldest son, Joseph, at ten years old, to 
be crowned at Presburg with the crown of St. 
Stephen. He promised the nobles all their former 
rights, and engaged to abolish the tribunal of Epe- 
ries if they would agree to own that their kingdom 
was hereditary both in the male and female line, 



Le 



I. 



365 



but they held out for the right of choosing a new 
family if the male line of Hapsburgs should end, 
and Leopold gave way, not seeing much chance as 
yet of sons being wanting to his house. This was 
in 1687. 




CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

WAR OF THE SUCCESSION. 
LEOPOLD I., 1635-1705. 

IN 1605 had died Karl, the Elector Palatine, 
grandson to the Winter King. He left no 
children, and his nearest male relations, the Duke 
of Neuburg, father to the Empress, inherite'd the 
county on the Rhine, but Elizabeth, the sister of 
the late Pfalzgraf, was married to the Duke of Or- 
leans, brother to Louis XIV., and the French 
king hoped through her to gain more of the border 
of the liver. So he claimed as her right various 
Rhineland fortresses, which would have let the 
French quite into the heart of the country. When 
the claim was refused, Marshal Duras was sent to 
invade the country, with orders to destroy what he 
could not keep. ' It was the depth of winter, and 



Leopold 1. 367 

three days' notice was given to each unhappy village 
that the people might remove, and then every 
house was pillaged and burnt, every garden rooted 
up, and even the vineyards and corn-fields laid 
waste. Wurms and Mannheim were burnt, the 
tombs of the German emperors at Spiers were 
broken open, and the noble old castle of Heidel- 
berg was blown up with gunpowder. 

It was worse than even Louis XIV. had intend- 
ed, and he stopped the ruin that was intended for 
Trier, but the Markgraf of Baden declared that he 
had come from Hungary only to see that Christians 
could be more savage than Turks. 

In the midst of this horrible war died the Great 
Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, after 
having ruled for forty-eight 3 r ears, and having re- 
stored Brandenburg and Prussia to prosperity after 
the dreadful state in which the Thirty Years' War 
had left them. 

The Elector of Saxony, August, had, on So- 
bieski's death, become a Roman Catholic, because 
he wanted to be King of Poland. He was a man 
of such wonderful strength that he could twist a 
horseshoe into any shape he pleased with his 
fingers, but he was a bad and dissipated man, 
whose profusion was quite a proverb, and whose 



HB8 Young Folks History of Germany. 

vice was frightful. One gypsying party alone cost 
8,000,000 dollars ! 

The Protestants complained so much that his de- 
fection upset the balance of the diet that they were 
allowed another Elector, Ernst August, Duke of 
Brunswick-Luneburg, who had become Elector of 
Hanover. 

The war in the Palatinate was, however, not so 
much fought out in Germany as by the Emperor's 
allies, the other powers of Europe, with William 
III. of England as their leading spirit, and in 1697 
peace was made at Ryswick, leaving Strasburg to 
France, but taking back to Germany Briesach, 
Friburg, and Philipsburg, which had been seized 
as belonging to Elsass. 

But the peace of Ryswick was only a resting- 
time before another Avar which every one saw 
coming, since Carlos II., King of Spain, was a 
sickly man, without children, whose death was con- 
stantly expected — and what w T as to become of his 
kingdom ? He had no brother, but he had two 
sisters : the eldest had married Louis XVI., who 
had left a son ; the other, Margarita, had been the 
first wife of Leopold, and had left one daughter, 
Antonio, who had married the Elector of Bavaria, 
and had a son named Ferdinand. 




FRIEDRICH J., KIXG OF PRUSSIA (COROXATIOX) . 



Leopold L 371 

The mothers of Leopold and Louis had also been 
Spanish princesses. France was so much too 
powerful already that the powers of Europe could 
not let the Dauphin inherit Spain — besides, his 
mother had renounced her rights to Spain on be- 
coming Queen of France. So the right heir seemed 
to be young Ferdinand of Bavaria, and Carlos 
made his will in his favor, but this had scarcely 
been done before the boy died, and the French and 
Austrians accused one another of poisoning him. 
Leopold's second wife, Eleonore of Neuburg, one 
of the best and most devout women in Europe, had 
given him two sons, Joseph and Karl, and he de- 
clared that all rights of the French queen having 
been renounced, he was the next heir through his 
mother, and that he would make over his claim to 
his second son, Karl ; and to make sure of the sup- 
port of the German powers, he offered to make the 
Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony kings. Fried- 
rich of Brandenburg, who was a weak man, fond of 
show and finery, was delighted. He chose to be 
called King of Prussia, and went to great expense 
for his coronation, but his wife was a very clever 
woman, who used to study with the philosopher 
Leibnitz, and was heartily weary of all his pomp 
and show. Louis XIV. promised to be contented 



372 Young Folks' History of G-ermany. 

with the duchy of Lorraine and kingdom of Naples 
and Sicily, and leave Karl Spain and the Nether- 
lands, and the other nations swore to see this car- 
ried ont. But poor Carlos II. thought it his duty 
to leave his kingdom to his nearest relation, and 
when he died, in 1700, he was found to have left 
all by will to Philip, Duke of Anjou, the second 
grandson of Louis XIV., and he was at once sent 
off to take possession, Avhile the Elector of Bavaria 
and his brother, the Archbishop of Koln, sided with 
him. However, the Emperor began the war in 
Italy, whither he sent Prince Eugene, who was by 
far his best general. He was a little lean man — 
a strange figure in his blue coat, brass buttons, and 
enormous cocked hat, but he was greatly respected 
for his uprightness, bravery, and skill, and he 
brought over his cousin, the Duke of Savoy, to 
take the Austrian instead of the French side. 

The Archduke Karl was sent to try his fortune 
in Spain, where he prospered as long as the En- 
glish Lord Peterborough fought for him, but his 
German advisers were so dull and wrong-headed, 
and he himself so proud and stupid, that Peter- 
borough threw up his command, and then the 
French gained ground, and Karl was forced to shut 
himself up in Barcelona. 



Leopold I. 875 

In the meantime, the Elector Maximilian of Ba- 
varia had brought a whole French army into his 
duchy to invade the Austrian Tyrol, which Bavaria 
always coveted. He gained some successes at first, 
but the Tyrolese, always the most true and loyal of 
peasants, drove him out with great loss. Eugene 
had been called back from Italy, and an English 
army, under the great Duke of Marlborough, 
marched up from Holland. These two great men 
then began a warm friendship, which never slack- 
ened, and together they met the huge French army 
which had come to aid Bavaria, and utterly routed 
it — first at Donauwerth, and then at Hochstadt, 
or, as the English call it, Blenheim, making the 
French general, Tallard, a prisoner on the 13th of 
August, 1701. 

It was the first victory gained over the French 
since the battle of St. Quentin, and it drove them 
quite out of Bavaria, which was held by the Aus- 
trian troops, while the Elector fled into the Nether- 
lands. 

Leopold had only just lived to see the tide turn, 
and his great enemy, Louis, begin to lose. He was 
already out of health, and died on the 5th of May, 
1705. He was sometimes called the Thick-lipped, 
the large upper lip inherited with the Tyrol from 



376 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Margarethe Maultasch being specially visible in 
him. He was in some ways like the Emperor 
Rudolf, being very studious and learned, and also 
so shy that his nobles hardly knew him by sight. 
One of his chamberlains, who was seldom at the 
palace, met a little dark figure in a passage, and 
asked, "Where's the Kaisar?" "That am I," 
answered a .hoarse voice. The Empress Eleonore 
survived him fifteen years, always busy in works 
of piety and charity, so that she was called "the 
mother of the poor." When she died, she bade 
these words alone to be inscribed on her coffin — 
"Eleonore, a poor sinner, died 19th January, 1720." 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

JOSEPH I., 1705-1711. 

JOSEPH, the eldest son of Leopold I., was 
twenty-six when he became Emperor. He 
was a very sensible and able man, superior to most 
of his family. He was fair and handsome, and was 
learned in many languages, with much knowledge 
of art and science ; he was also much more free and 
ready of speech and manner than his father, though 
he hated fine speeches, and would not attend to 
birthday odes. "I come to hear music, not my 
OAvn praise," he said, when these began in the 
theatre. 

He took away some of the harsh decrees against 
the Protestants who remained in his hereditary do- 
minions, and he forbade the Catholic priests to 
preach sermons abusing them, and in everything he 
377 



378 Young Folks' History of Grermany. 

gave his chief confidence to Prince Eugene, to whom 
he looked up like a father. 

War was going on everywhere. The Bavarians 
had revolted against the Austrians, and called 
back their Elector with the help of the French and 
there was a sharp war before he was driven out 
again, and put to the ban of the Empire. 

Then August of Saxony, as King of Poland, had, 
in alliance with Russia, made war on the young 
King Charles XII. of Sweden, and had thus 
brought down on himself a most terrible enemy, 
for Charles was one of the most fierce and stern of 
warriors, less like a man than a piece of iron 
wound up to do nothing but fight. He drove 
August out of Poland, hunted him up and down 
Saxony, beat him over and over again, and would 
not grant him any respite unless he would resign 
the crown of Poland, and give up other matters 
very dear to him. August begged to see Charles, 
in hopes of softening him, but the Swede, to show 
contempt for the shameful luxury he found in the 
palace at Dresden, would talk of nothing but his 
great jack-boots, telling the other king that he 
never took them off save when he went to bed. 
He stayed a year in Saxony, and settled the affairs 
of Poland by making king a young nobleman 



Joseph I. 379 

named Stanislas Lecksinsky, after wliicli he 
marched off to Rnssia, where he found the Czar, 
Peter the Great, much too strong for him. 

The war of the Spanish succession was going on 




JOSEPH I. 

all the time, though the Archduke Karl Avas unable 
to hold any ground in Spain ; Marlborough was 
fighting the French in the Netherlands, and Eugene 



380 Young Folks' History of Grermany. 

was sent by Joseph to help his cousin of Savoy, 
whose lands were being terribly ravaged by the 
French. 

His capital, Turin, was being besieged, when 
Eugene brought up the Austrian army, and at- 
tacked the French in their camp, gaining such a 
victory, that out of 50,000 men only 20,000 were 
left by the time the broken army arrived at Pig- 
nerol, and the French were entirely driven out of 
Lombardy. Then Eugene marched even to the 
kingdom of Naples, where the people were quite 
willing to cast off the dominion of Philip of France ; 
and after this, Eugene and Victor Amadeus ad- 
vanced into the old Imperial fief of Provence, and 
laid seige to Toulon, but could not take it. The 
House of Austria had never so prospered since the 
days of Charles V., and Eugene, going to join 
Marlborough in the Netherlands, shared in another 
great victory at Oudenarde. 

After all these losses Louis XIV. began to beg 
for peace, but Joseph and Queen Anne of England 
would only consent on condition that he should 
help to drive his own grandson out of Spain, and 
this was too much to ask, so the war raged on, and 
the allied armies in Flanders laid seige to Lille, 
which had excellent fortifications, and was defend- 



Joseph I. 381 

ed by the brave Marshal Boufflers. Eugene man- 
aged the siege, while Marlborough protected him. 
Two assaults were beaten off, and Eugene was 
once struck on the head by a splinter, and was 
thought to be killed. At last Boufflers gave up the 
town, and retired into the citadel, hoping in vain 
to be relieved, but the French army would not 
venture on a battle, and a letter was sent to Bouf- 
flers allowing him to surrender. There was no 
way of sending it but through the Austrian army, 
and Eugene himself forwarded it with a note tell- 
ing the brave Boufflers how much he admired his 
defence, and that he might choose his own terms. 
Boufflers offered what he thought fair, and this was 
accepted. He asked Eugene to dine with him, and 
the answer was — "I will come if you will give me 
one of your siege dinners;" and so the first course 
consisted entirely of horse-flesh, dressed in differ- 
ent ways. 

The next year there was another terrible battle 
at Malplaquet, still in the Netherlands, and harder 
fought than any had been before, though the 
French were again beaten. In the course of the 
battle Eugene was wounded in the knee, but he 
would not leave the field, saying that if he lived 



382 Young Folks' History of Crermany. 

till evening there would be time to dress wounds 
then. 

But in tins full tide of success a grievous blow 
fell upon Germany. Joseph caught the smallpox, 
and, according to the treatment of the time, was 
rolled up in twenty yards of scarlet cloth, with 
every breath of air shut out from his room, so that 
it was no wonder that he died in his thirty-third 
year, on the 17th of April, 1711. His only son 
had died when a few months old, and he had only 
two daughters ; so he left his hereditary states to 
his brother, making him sign what was called the 
Family Compact, that if he too should have no 
male heir, Joseph's daughter should come before 
his in the succession. 

The war was, under Marlborough and Eugene, 
carried on in a much less savage manner, but the 
little courts of Germany were mostly in a very bad 
state. August of Saxony was the worst of all the 
princes, but they all wanted more or less to be as 
like Louis XIV. as they could, and imitated him in 
his selfish vices and extravagances if they could do 
so in nothing else. They despised German as a 
vulgar language, and spoke hardly anything but 
French, while they made all the display they could, 
and as they were mostly very poor, this could only 



Joseph I. 



383 



be done by getting everything they could out of 
their unhappy peasants, who were very rough, 
boorish, and uncared for. Nor had the cities by 
any means recovered from the effects of the Thirty- 
Years* War. 




CHAPTER XL. 

KAEL VL, 1711-1740. 

r I ^HE Archduke Karl was still at Barcelona 
-*- when he heard the news of his brother's 
death, which gave him all the hereditary possessions 
of the House of Hapsburg. He sailed at once for 
Genoa, while Prince Eugene so dealt with the 
Electors that they chose Karl Emperor, and he was 
crowned at Frankfort, and afterwards as King of 
Hungary at Presburg. 

But the crowns of the Empire and of Spain were 
not to be joined again by another Karl. The 
power of Marlborough's war-party was over with 
Queen Anne of England, and the Earl of Oxford 
thought it would be better to let Philip of France 
keep Spain, and that old Louis XIV. ought not to 
be pushed any further. Karl meant, however, to 
fight on, and sent Eugene to England to try to per- 

384 



Karl VI. 



385 



suade Queen Anne to continue the war, but the 
Savoyard was not courtly enough to please her, and 
people in London were disappointed to see a little, 




dry, insignificant-looking elderly man instead of 
the hero t\\Qj expected. He gained nothing by his 
visit but a diamond-hilted sword for himself, and 



386 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

the English and Dutch troops were withdrawn from 
his army. 

Then he tried to stir up the Germans to force 
Louis XIV. into giving up all that France had 
seized during that long reign, but, say what he 
would, nobody moved, and at last Karl consented 
to make peace. He gave up all claim to Spain, 
but he kept the Netherlands, which had belonged 
to the Spanish line ever since the marriage of Philip 
the Handsome and Juana the Mad, and the for- 
tresses of Breisach, Friburg, and Kehl were restored 
to Germany. The island of Sardinia was also 
given up to him, and Sicily was given to the Duke 
of Savoy, while the claim of the King of Prussia to 
Neufchatel in Switzerland was acknowledged. 
This peace, which finished the war of the Spanish 
succession, is called the Peace of Utrecht, and was 
signed in September, 1713. 

Victor Amadeus of Savoy found Sicily too far 
from his dukedom, so he exchanged it with the 
Emperor for Sardinia, and took the title of King 
of the last-mentioned isle.. 

The Electors of Bavaria and Koln were pardoned 
and returned to their lands, and the next year 
another Elector became a King, when George of 
Brunswick, Elector of Hanover, obtained the crown 



Karl VI. 387 

of England through the Act of Settlement, which 
shut out the Roman Catholic heirs. It must have 
been a misfortune to Koln to have such an Arch- 
bishop as their Elector restored, for he had no 
notion of the duties of his office. Once, during 
his exile, he gave notice that he was going to preach 
in the Court Chapel at Versailles on the 1st of 
April, and when a large congregation had assem- 
bled he appeared in the pulpit, shouted out, " April 
fools all!" and ran away, to the sound of trumpets 
and kettle-drums. 

His nephew, Karl Albrecht of Bavaria, and his 
wife lived disgraceful lives, given up to pleasure. 
They were great hunters, and the lady kept twelve 
dogs always close to her bedroom, and two in it, 
and she not only beat her dogs, but her courtiers 
with her own hand. 

The Markgraf of Baden, Karl, who built Karl- 
sruhe, was another byword for gross self-indulgence, 
and the most respectable court among the German 
princes was that of Friedrich Wilhelm II., King of 
Prussia. He was a rough, plain, religious man, but 
with the taste and manner of a drill-sergeant. He 
cared for nothing so much as his army, and for 
getting a set of giants for Iris guards ; he carried on 
business with his ministers and generals sitting' at 



388 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

a table, smoking their pipes over tankards of beer. 
He so hated French politeness and the vices which 
had come in with it, that he was perfectly brutal in 
his manners to his wife and daughters, and greatly 
misused his clever son Friedrich, who had a passion 
for everything French. When the young man 
tried to escape with his friend, Lieutenant Katt, 
they were seized, and treated as deserters. Katt 
was shot, and Friedrich forced to stand and see his 
friend's death, after which he had a long imprison- 
ment, till, when his father forgave him, he was sud- 
denly brought out and placed behind his mother's 
chair while she was playing at cards. 

In the meantime, Prince Eugene was carrying on 
a great war with the Turks on the Hungarian 
frontier, where he was joined by all who wanted to 
see good service. He beat the Grand Vizier at 
Carlowitz, and then took Temeswar, and laid siege 
to Belgrade. The Turks came, 250,000 in num- 
ber, to its relief, and encamped on the heights 
above, while Eugene lay ill of a fever in his tent. 
On the 1st of August, 1717, he was recovered 
enough to give them battle. He attacked them in 
the middle of the night, and gained a most splendid 
victory, which immediately gave him possession of 



Karl VI. 389 

Belgrade, and he placed guards along the whole 
bank of the Danube to watch against the Turks. 

Karl VI. had no son, and the great object of the 
latter half of his life was to cheat his nieces in favor 
of his daughters. He betrothed his daughters to 
the sons of the Duke of Lorraine, and obtained from 
the diet and from the powers of Europe consent to 
a Pragmatic Sanction, by which the eldest, Maria 
Theresa, was to succeed to all his hereditary states. 
To get the support of Saxony, Karl gave his sup- 
port to Friedrich August II., who claimed the 
crown of Poland on his father's death, against 
Stanislas Lecksinsky. The daughter of Stanislas 
was wife to Louis the XV., and thus there was 
another war with France. Eugene, at seventy-one, 
took the command, and was hailed by the army 
with shouts of, " Our father," while Friedrich 
Wilhelm of Prussia saluted, saying, "I see my 
master." But there was not much to be done, the 
French took Philipsburg, and Eugene was recalled, 
and took leave of his army, and went back to 
Vienna, where he spent the last two years of his 
life in deeds of beneficence. He was so good a 
master that his servants grew old under him, and 
in the last year of his life the united ages of him- 
self, his coachman, and two footmen amounted 



390 Young Folks' History of Gcermany. 

to 310. He now and then tried to give advice to 
Karl, but was not heeded, though he was missed 
and mourned when he died suddenly at seventy- 
three, in 1719. 

He had been the only man in the Council of 
War who did not cheat, and the army, though 
counted at 120,000, was really only 40,000, and 
they were half-starved, half-clothed, and had use- 
less weapons, so they Avere beaten in Italy by the 
French and Spaniards, and in Hungary by the 
Turks, and Karl had to make the best peace he 
could. It was a strange arrangement — Friedrich 
August of Saxony was to keep Poland, and Stanis- 
las Lecksinsky was to have Lorraine, and leave it 
to his daughter, the French Queen. The real 
Duke Franz, husband to Maria Theresa, was to have 
Tuscany instead, and everybody again promised 
that she should have the Austrian dominions, and 
gave hopes that her husband should be chosen 
Emperor, he being descended from Karl the Great. 
But faith, truth, and honesty were little heeded. 
Everybody preyed upon the Emperor, and the waste 
was beyond belief. Two hogsheads of Tokay wine 
were said to be used daily for dipping the bread 
on which the Empress's parrots were fed, twelve 
gallons of wine were supposed to be used every 



Karl VI. 



391 



day for her possetts, and twelve barrels for her 
baths, while all the Austrian states were in a 
wretched state of want and misery, all because 
Karl was dull and unheeding. He died on the 
12th of October, 1740, the last male heir of the 
House of Hapsburg. 




CHAPTER XLI. 

KARL VII 1740. 

X TOBODY cared for Karl VI.'s Pragmatic Sanc- 
-*- ^ tion any more than he had cared for Joseph's 
Family Compact. No sooner was he dead than the 
husbands of the two daughters of Joseph put 
forward their claim; Marie Josepha had married 
Friedrich August of Saxony, King of Poland, and 
Maria Amalie, Karl, Elector of Bavaria, who was 
also descended from Ferdinand I. 

Moreover, Friedrich II. of Prussia, who had that 
year succeeded his father, the old Corporal of Pots- 
dam, was determined to use his fine army to get 
something for himself, so, only a month after the 
Emperor's death, he dashed into Silesia, and seized 
a number of towns. Then he wrote to Maria 
Theresa that he would support her claims and vote 

392 



Karl VII 395 

for lier husband as Emperor if she would give up 
the province to him. 

Marie Theresa was a beautiful and brave young- 
woman of three-ancl-twenty, and would not submit 
to such treatment. She sent her army against the 
Prussians, and a battle was fought at Mollwitz, 
when Friedrich thought all was lost, and galloped 
off the field, saying to his staff — "Adieu, messieurs, 
I am the best mounted ; " but when he saw them 
again, it was to find that, so far from being routed, 
they had gained a complete victory. 

France and Spain joined Bavaria, Saxony, and 
Prussia against Maria Theresa, and at the diet at 
Frankfort in 1742, Karl of Bavaria was chosen Em- 
peror, but without the vote of George II. of Eng- 
land, the Elector of Hanover, and the only ally of 
the brave young Queen. Karl invaded Austria, 
and August, Bohemia ; Vienna was in danger, but 
Karl was jealous of the progress of the Saxons, and 
turned aside to secure Bohemia, which he mastered 
for a time. He was crowned at Prague, and set 
out to receive the Imperial crown at Frankfort. 

Maria Theresa was driven from city to city, but 
she was resolved not to give up one jot of her in- 
heritance. Her hope was in the Hungarians, and 
when she went to Presburg to be crowned, she ap- 



396 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

peared before the diet in robes of deep mourning 
for her father, but jewelled all over, and with the 
sacred crown of St. Stephen on her head, her fair 
hair flowing below in rich curls, the sword girded 
to her waist, and her little son Joseph in her arms. 
She made the diet a spirited speech in Latin, which 
was the state language in Hungary, which so 
stirred the hearts of the brave Magyar nobility, 
that they all waved their swords in the air, and 
cried out in one voice in Latin — " Moriamur pro 
rege, Maria Theresia " (Let us die for our King, 
Maria Theresa). Then she put on the royal breast- 
plate, mounted a charger, and rode up the royal 
mount, defying the four corners of the world with 
her drawn sword in true kingly fashion. 

Not only all the Hungarians, but their neighbors, 
the Croats and Transylvanians, mustered in her 
favor. The English raised money to equip them, 
and, in the meantime, her enemies were quarreling 
out of jealousy of one another ; and Friedrich II. 
let her know that he would join her if she would 
give up the whole of Silesia to him. 

On the very day on which Karl VII. was 
crowned at Aachen, Maria Theresa's brother-in-law, 
Charles V. of Lorraine, invaded Bavaria, and drove 
out the French army. However, he was soon after 



Karl TIL 



397 



defeated by the Prussians at Czaslau, on the Bo- 
hemian border, and this loss brought the Queen of 
Hungary to consent to his terms, and give up Si- 
lesia to him, though with great grief and bitterness. 




KARL VII. 



She had also made peace with the King of Saxony, 
and had only Bavaria and France to fight with ; 
but she had England on her side, and she hoped 



398 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

that she should conquer back again Lorraine, her 
husband's proper inheritance. 

Prague was held by the French under Marshal 
Belleisle for the Emperor. It was closely block- 
aded by Prince Charles of Lorraine, who drove 
back the army coming to their help, and expected 
soon to have the whole French garrison in his 
hands; but it was the depth of winter, and the 
cold prevented his watching closely enough, so 
that Marshal Belleisle, with provisions for twelve 
days, made his way out at night with 14,000 men, 
only leaving behind him a small guard with the 
sick and wounded in the citadel. He reached 
Egra on the twelfth day, having lost only 100 men 
by attacks of the enemy, but 1200 by the fright- 
ful weather, so that the Bohemians found the roads 
dreadful to behold, for they were overspread with 
corpses, heaps of a hundred or more lying stiffened 
with frost all together. Still all the cannon and 
colors were saved, and Avhen the guard in the 
citadel were summoned to surrender, their officer 
answered that unless he were allowed to march out 
with the honors of war, he should set fire to the 
four corners of the city, and perish in it. 

He was therefore allowed to go free with his 
army, and Maria Theresa celebrated her conquest 



Karl VII 399 

by a chariot race, as like those of the ancient 
Greeks as possible, considering that ladies drove 
in it, and the Queen and her sister were among the 
competitors. 

On the 12th of May, 1743, Maria Theresa was 
crowned Queen of Bohemia, having thus gained all 
her hereditary dominions, which she ruled with 
great vigor and spirit, having set everything on a 
much better footing than had been in her father's 
time. 

Her brother-in-law, Prince Charles, marched to 
punish the Emperor, and beat him and the French, 
so that Munich had to be deserted, and to obtain 
some kind of respite, he made a treaty with the 
Queen, engaging to remain neutral, and to re- 
nounce all his claims to the Austrian succession. 

The Avar with France still went on, and the 
English and Austrian armies, with George the II. 
at their head, routed the French at Dettingen. 
The old clays of Marlborough and Eugene seemed 
to be coming again, and Vienna was in transports 
of joy. The Queen was out on a water-party on 
the Danube when the news arrived, and the whole 
population poured out to meet her, and lined the 
banks for nine miles, shouting with ecstacy. 

It was said of her that she was like the English 



400 Young Folks' History of G-errnany. 

Elizabeth, in being able to make every man about 
her a hero ; and, not contented with what she had 
recovered, she baffled George Il.'s endeavors to 
make peace, being resolved to force Karl of Ba- 
varia to resign the title of Emperor, and to con- 
quer back Elsass and Lorraine. However, her 
attacks on these provinces did not prosper, and 
her other scheme was prevented by the death of 
the unfortunate Karl VII., who died early in 1745 
from the shock of hearing, when already ill of the 
gout, of the defeat of the French in a skirmish. 
He advised his son, Maximilian Joseph, not to let 
himself, like him, be made a French tool, but to 
make his peace with Austria as soon as possible. 



CHAPTER XLIL 

FRANZ L, 1745-1765. 

r I ^HERE was no difficulty made about electing 
■*- Franz of Lorraine, the husband of Maria 
Theresa, Emperor on the death of Karl VII. The 
new Elector of Bavaria made his peace by giving 
him his vote, and Friedrich II. of Prussia acknowl- 
edged him. Maria Theresa was henceforth called 
the Empress Queen. She loved her husband 
heartily, but she let him have no authority in her 
own hereditary dominions, which she ruled in her 
own right, and an Emperor had by this time hardly 
any power over the princes of Germany, and was 
little more than a name. 

The war in Germany was over, but that with 
France still lasted, with England still as the ally of 
Austria; but France had now a great general, 

401 



402 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Marshal Saxe, a half-brother of the King of Saxony 
and he gained so many advantages that Maria 
Theresa and George II. at length consented to 
make peace with Louis XV. at Aachen, or, as the 
French call it, Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, and Europe 
had rest for eight years. 

Meantime Friedrich II. was hard at work improv- 
ing his country as well as his army, causing great 
works to be done in husbandry and in manufac- 
tures, and working up Prussia to be one of the 
foremost and most prosperous kingdoms in Europe, 
for he was a wonderfully clear and far-sighted man. 
Unhappily, the rude, harsh way in which his father 
had tried to force religion on him had given him a 
dislike to it, which made Mm think all piety folly. 
These were the days when the French were writing 
books full of sneers at all faith, and Friedrich, who 
despised everything German and admired every- 
thing French, never rested till he had brought the 
greatest unbeliever of them all, Voltaire, the witty 
writer of poetry, to his court at Potsdam. The 
guest was received with rapture, and Friedrich 
thought nothing too good for him ; but the King 
and the poet were equally vain — Voltaire thought 
he could meddle with state affairs, and Friedrich 
fancied himself able to write poetry. They laughed 



Franz I. 403 

at each other in private, and people carried the say- 
ings of one to the other. Voltaire exclaimed, when 
Friedrich sent him some verses to correct — "Here 
is more of his dirty linen to wash; " and Friedrich 
was reported to have said he only wanted Voltaire 
till he could squeeze the orange and throw away 
the rind. Moreover, Voltaire gave himself great 
airs to the King's suite. Once, at dinner, he called 
a noble young page who was waiting a Pomeranian 
beast. "When the youth was, shortly after, attend- 
ing the Frenchman on a journey, he told the crowd 
that the little, thin, dry figure grinning and chatter- 
ing in the carriage was the King's monkey, so when 
Voltaire tried to open the door they closed in to 
catch him, and the more he raged, the more monkey- 
like they thought him. 

The two friends quarreled desperately, and 
Voltaire left Berlin in a passion, but was pursued 
and arrested because he had a poem of the King's 
in his boxes. However, he was soon set free, and 
afterwards they made up their quarrel, though 
without meeting. 

Marie Theresa's heart was set on getting back 
Silesia, and most of the powers of Europe distrusted 
the King of Prussia. So she and her minister, 
Count Kaunitz, began to form alliances against 



404 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Friedrich. On his side lie had made friends with 
England, and the Empress Queen laid aside her 
hatred to France, and agreed with Louis XV., the 
Empress Elizabeth of Russia, and the King of 
Saxony and Poland, to tame the pride of the House 
of Brandenburg. 

Friedrich, finding out these alliances, sent to de- 
mand of Maria Theresa whether there was to be 
peace or war, and, on her answer, he began the 
Seven Years' "War in 1756 by dashing into Saxony. 
He gained a victory at Lowositz, and pushed on to 
Dresden, where he sent his Scotch general, Marshal 
Keith, to demand the King's papers, where he 
knew he should find proofs of the league against 
him. The Queen — daughter to Joseph I. — re- 
fused to give them up, stood in front of the box, 
and sat upon it, only giving them up when she 
found the King would use violence. She was al- 
lowed to join her husband in Poland, where she 
died of grief for the misery of her country. 

Then marching into Bohemia, Friedrich fought a 
dreadful battle with Charles of Lorraine, which 
lasted eleven hours. He gained the victory and 
besieged Prague, but was beaten at Kollih by the 
Austrian army who came to relieve it, and was so 
grieved at the disaster that he sat for hours silent 



Franz I. 407 

on a hollow tree, drawing figures in the sand with 
his stick. 

He was forced to leave Bohemia, and in the 
meantime the Swedes and Russians were overrun- 
ning the Prussian provinces, and his English 
friends had been beaten at Hastenbeck by the 
French, and had left the way open into Prussia. 
Friedrich and his kingdom seemed as if they must 
be crushed among all these great powers. He had 
made up his mind to die rather than yield, and 
carried about with him a bottle of poison, though 
all the time he never ceased from his dry, sharp 
jokes. He was the most skillful captain in all 
Europe, and was able to save his country by a 
splendid victory over the French at Rossbach, and 
another over the Austrians at Leuthen. The next 
year, 1758, he beat the Russians at Zorndorf, but 
after that he suffered two defeats. He lost his 
faithful Scottish Marshal Keith at Zorndorf, and at 
Kunersdorf, when the battle was over, he had only 
3000 men left out of 48,000, and had to sleep on 
straw in a hut, with three balls in his clothes. 
Dresden was taken by the Austrians, but the Rus- 
sians had suffered so much in their victory that 
they had to retreat from Prussia. 

The battle of Minden was fought to save 



408 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Hanover from the French by the English and Ger- 
mans, and was a victory, though ill-managed. 
Friedrich was able to ^besiege Dresden, which he 
ruined by a cruel cannonade but could not take, 
for the Austrians were upon him again, took Berlin, 
and overran Prussia. Their General, Esterhazy, 
lodged in Potsdam itself, but he would not let it 
be plundered, and only took away one picture as a 
trophy. Meantime, Friedrich fought a frightful 
battle at Torgau in Saxony with Marshal Daun. 
He was struck down by a spent ball, and carried 
to the village church, where he lay on the floor 
writhing, and Marshal Zeithen fought on in the dark, 
thinking the battle lost, till morning light showed 
that the Austrians were driven away, and the field 
covered with heaps of slain. 

Torgau was the last battle of the Seven Years' 
War. Everybody was worn out, and Maria The- 
resa found that though Prussia might seem over- 
whelmed for a moment, it always revived more 
fiercely than ever, and she consented to conferences 
being held at Hubertsberg. A treaty was made in 
1763 by which Saxony went back to August III., 
and Silesia was left in the hands of Friedrich. 
Nothing had been gained by anyone in this horrible 
war, in which 640,000 men had died, and misery 




KRIEDRICH THE GREAT AND ZEITHEN. 



Franz I. <£L1 

unspeakable inflicted on the unhappy people of 
Saxony, Prussia, and Silesia. 

Two years later, in 1775, Maria Theresa lost her 
husband, the Emperor Franz I., a good man, whom 
she loved devotedly, and called her heart's joy. 
She almost broke her heart when he died, she let 
no one sew his shroud but herself, and for the rest 
of her life used to spend many hours in praying by 
his coffin in the vault of the chapel of her palace 
at Vienna. 




CHAPTER XLIII. 

JOSEPH II., 1765-1790. 

r T^HE eldest of the many sons of Franz I. and 
-*- Maria Theresa was elected Emperor, but 
his mother remained sovereign of her hereditary 
states, and the title of Emperor conveyed hardly 
any power. Germany was a collection of states, 
some large, but mostly very small. Prussia and 
Saxony, Bavaria and Wurtemburg, were large and 
powerful, but there were many like dukedoms and 
principalities, not so large as an English county, 
and these, like the free towns, belonged indeed to 
the Empire, but were no more ruled by the Em- 
peror than were France or England. 

August III. of Saxony died soon after his return 
from Dresden, and the crown of Poland was given 
to a noble named Stanislas Poniatowsky, whom the 
Empress Catherine of Russia forced the Poles to 

412 



Joseph II. 413 

elect. Prussia meantime was recovering from its 
misfortunes under Friedrich II., whose wonderful 
skill in this terrible war had earned him the name 
of the Great. He helped the people who had 
suffered most with gifts of money and corn, he 
drained marshes, opened canals, and wonderfully im- 
proved the country. He did all this by taxes on 
salt, coffee, and tobacco, at which people grumbled 
a good deal, but he never punished any one for this, 
saying his people might talk as much as they pleased 
if they would only obey. Once when he found a 
crowd staring at a caricature of himself sitting on 
the ground with a coffee-mill between his legs, 
and the label, " Old Fritz, the coffee-grinder," he 
laughed at it, and had it pasted lower down on the 
wall that the people might see it better. He was 
very just even where his own plans were concerned, 
and left a windmill standing, an eye-sore to his 
favorite palace of Sans Souci, because the miller 
would not part with it. He built churches for 
both Protestants and Roman Catholics, but he had 
no fixed faith himself, and encouraged all kinds of 
"bold questionings around him. 

Young Joseph II. much admired him, and longed 
to bring in his reforms to Austria, but the Em- 
press Queen would not hear of them. When her 



414 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

son wanted to pull down the walls that shut in 
Vienna, she said, "I am an old woman. I can 
almost remember Vienna besieged by the Turks* 
I have twice seen it almost the frontier of my 
dominions. Let Joseph do as he pleases when 
I am dead. While I live, Vienna shall not be dis- 
mantled." 

Joseph, in his eagerness to copy the King of 
Prussia, went to visit him, under the name of 
Count Falkenstein, and the two were so delighted 
with one another that the Emperor always spoke 
of Friedrich as " the King, my master," and the 
King hung his rooms at Sans Souci with portraits 
of Joseph as " a young man of whom he could 
not see enough." 

Joseph's head was already full of Friedrich's 
free-thinking notions, as well as of his able plans 
for his country, and he was now persuaded into a 
wicked scheme, contrived by Friedrich and by 
Catherine of Russia, who was likewise an unbe- 
liever, namely, that the three powers — Russia, 
Austria, and Prussia, should seize on the unfortu- 
nate country of Poland, and divide it between 
them. It had always been badly governed; the 
kings were elective, and never had power enough 
to keep order, and the nobles were alwaj^s fighting ; 




MARIA THERESA AND KAUNITZ: 



Joseph II. 417 

but that did not make the ruin of it less a wicked 
act on the part of the three nobles, and so thought 
the Empress Queen, who wrote that she had not 
been so unhappy even when she had hardly a city 
in which to lay her head, but Friedrich only 
laughed, and said, "I would as soon write the 
Jewish history in madrigals as make three sover- 
eigns agree, especially when two are women." 

She was old now, and, in spite of all she could 
say and write, her son and Kaunitz had their way, 
the Poles were too quarrelsome and broken into 
parties to make much resistance, and the plan was 
carried out, though not all at once. 

In 1777 died Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria. 
Karl Theodoc of the Rhine was the right heir, but 
Joseph set up an unjust claim to two-thirds of it 
through one of his ancestresses, in spite of his 
mother, and frightened the Elector into yielding. 
However, Friedrich took up the cause, and marched 
into Bohemia, saying he was only come to teach a 
young gentleman his military exercise, and he man- 
aged so cleverly to avoid a battle that this was 
called the potato war, because the men did little 
but roast potatoes at their watch-fires. Maria 
Theresa wrote to Friedrich that she could not bear 
that they should begin again to tear one another's 



418 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

grey hairs, at which Joseph was very angry, but at 
last peace was made at Teschen, to her great de- 
light. 

After this, Joseph set out to make a visit to the 
Russian Empress. His favorite way of traveling was 
to ride on before his suite, pretending to be a courier 
sent on to order horses, dine on a sausage and 
some beer, and ride on as soon as the carriages came 
in sight. Thus he found our how to do many kind 
acts. Once he offered to stand godfather to a child 
newly born in a poor hut, and amazed the parents 
by coming to the christening in full state as Em- 
peror; and another evening he supped with an 
officer with a poor pension, who had ten children 
of his own, but had adopted an orphan besides. 
Soon after came a letter from the Emperor, endow- 
ing each of the eleven with two hundred florins 
a-year. 

Joseph came home in 1780, just as his mother 
was dying, leaving nine survivors out of her six- 
teen children. She had been a good woman, a 
pious and upright queen, and she was greatly loved 
by her peojile, whom she had heartily loved and 
worked for. Her death left Joseph free to try to 
follow his favorite Friedrich's example, and to 
sweep away all that he thought worn-out and use- 



Joseph II 421 

less. So would not go to be crowned in Hungary 
because he would not swear to obey the old consti- 
tution, and he carried off the crown of St. Stephen 
to Vienna. Love of his mother prevented a re- 
bellion, but there was great discontent at the 
changes he made. 

In all his dominions he made changes. He for- 
bade his clergy to appeal to the Pope, he altered 
bishoprics, broke up three hundred convents, leav- 
ing only those that were schools, prevented pilgrim- 
ages, and removed images from the churches. 
The Pope, Pius VI., came to Vienna to plead with 
him, but the Emperor treated him with cold civil- 
ity, and would not let the Austrian clergy visit 
him, even walling up the back door of his house 
lest they should get in privately. 

Joseph wanted to exchange the Netherlands for 
the duchy of Bavaria, but Friedrich the Great in- 
duced all the other German powers to make a 
league against any change in the Empire, and he 
had to give way. It was the last work of Fried- 
rich, who was so ill that he could neither ride, 
walk, nor lie down, though he still attended to 
business, listened to the books of the day, and 
played with his dogs, the beings he seemed to love 
best. He even desired to be buried among them 



422 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

in his garden when he died in 1786, and was suc- 
ceeded by his nephew, Friedrich Wilhelm II., 
having made his little kingdom a great power. 

Joseph had not strength or skill to succeed in an 
old country as he had done in a new one. Every- 
one was in a state of grief and anger at the changes, 
and he declared his heart must be of stone not to 
break when he found that, while he meant to do 
good, he had only done harm, and made enemies of 
his mother's faithful people. He tried to help the 
Russian Empress to conquer the Turks, hoping to 
get a share for himself, but he lost many men in 
the marshes on the Danube from illness and in 
skirmishes, and he caught a fever himself, and came 
home to Vienna ill, and grieved at the bad news 
which came in from all sides. " My epitaph should 
be — ' Here lies a monarch who, with the best in- 
tentions, never carried out a single plan,' " he said. 
And he soon died, broken-hearted, in his 49th year, 
on the 20th of February, 1T90. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

LEOPOLD TL, 1790-1792. 

LEOPOLD, the next brother to Joseph, had 
received the duchy of Tuscany on his father's 
death, and had ruled there twenty-five years. He 
came to the crown in very dangerous times, amid 
the troubles that had darkened the last days of 
Joseph. 

Hungary had revolted, saying Joseph had broken 
all their laws, and that, as the direct male line of 
Hapsburg had failed, they had the right of choos- 
ing their King. Moreover, the Netherlands had 
been angry at the interference of Joseph with their 
old laws, and had revolted, and set up a republic 
on their own account, and there was a terrible ex- 
ample close at hand in France of the dangers that 
might beset kings who had tried their people's pa- 
tience too long. Leopold's youngest sister, Marie 



424 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Antoinette, was, with her husband, Louis XVI., 
threatened daily by the mob of Paris, while the 
National Assembly were changing all the laws and 
institutions, and viewed the King and Queen as 
their greatest enemies*, hating her especially as an 
Austrian, as they considered the Hapsburgs as the 
great foes of France. She was like a prisoner in 
her own palace, while Germany, like all the coun- 
tries, was fast filling with emigrant nobles, who 
fled from the savage violence of the people, who 
rose to revenge the long course of oppression they 
had suffered. 

Germany being the easiest country to reach, a 
much lower and worse stamp of emigrants went 
thither than those who came to England. There 
they behaved well, and made themselves respected 
as well as pitied, but in Germany many lived low, 
dissipated lives, and increased the taste the Ger- 
mans had for French manners and language, and, 
unfortunately, for French fashions and vices. 

Leopold could do nothing to help his sister, for 
Friedrieh Wilhelm III. of Prussia, a vicious and 
selfish man, hoping to rise on the ruins of the 
House of Austria, encouraged all the disturbances 
in the Austrian dominions, and let the discontented 
Hungarian nobles hold meetings at Berlin. More- 



Leopold II. 425 

over, the war with Turkey which Joseph had be- 
gun was still going on. 

The Austrians took the city of Orsova, but after 
trying to besiege Wicldin, they were obliged to 
make a truce with the Turks, because the Prussian 
King had taken up arms against them, and had a 
great army in Silesia, with which he threatened to 
invade the Austrian province of Gallicia, and as he 
still had in his army many of the old generals of 
Friedrich the Great, he thought himself able to do 
everything. However, the English and Dutch 
came forward, and made peace between Austria 
and Prussia, and Prussia then mediated between 
Austria and Turkey. 

After this, the King of Prussia voted for Leo- 
pold's election as Emperor, and he was crowned 
at Frankfort. At the same time he quieted his 
Austrian subjects by undoing some of the changes 
to which they had most objected, and tried to gov- 
ern as much as possible in his mother's spirit, 
which, though it seemed to the new way of think- 
ing narrow and unenlightened, was kind and 
fatherly, and suited the loyal Austrians and Tyrol- 
ese. 

He had more trouble with Hungary, which was 
always turbulent, and which had been completely 



426 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

unsettled by Joseph's reforms and the resistance 
to them, and the nobles sent him a set of demands 
which he would not grant, only promising to gov- 
ern Hungary as his grandfather and mother had 
done. They were obliged to be satisfied, and he 
sent the crown of St. Stephen to Presburg, and 
came thither himself, with his five sons, for his cor- 
onation. The Hungarians welcomed him warmly, 
and they chose his fourth son, Leopold, to act as 
their Palatine, and to place the crown upon his 
father's head. 

He then prepared to teach the Netherlands to 
submit to him, and entered the country. The 
States were of various minds as to what they wanted, 
their leaders were quarreling, and ' they ended by 
yielding to him one by one, but not without leaving 
a great deal of discontent, which was much in- 
creased by all that was passing in France. 

Leopold was free now to do something for his 
sister and her husband, and he allied himself with 
Prussia and Spain, preparing armies to march upon 
France, while the emigrant nobles eagerly enlisted. 
He sent messages to the King and Queen of France 
that they had better wait patiently till he could 
rescue them, and try to win back their people's 
hearts, but that he meant to assist them not bv 



Leopold II. 



427 



words but deeds. In truth, the invasion he in- 
tended was the very worst thing for poor Louis 
and Marie Antoinette, for it only made the people 




LEOPOLD II. 



more furious with them, thinking them guilty of 
bringing in foreign enemies to crush the freedom 
newly won. Knowing this, the King and Queen 



428 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

tried to escape, but were seized and brought back 
again, amid hooting and all kinds of ill-usage. 

Moreover, Leopold found it less easy to begin a 
war with the French than he had expected. The 
English would not take up arms, and his ministers 
said that he would only lose the Netherlands, 
which the French coveted above all things, and 
that to be friends with them would make them 
treat his sister better. So he acknowledged their 
new constitution, and let their Ambassodor at 
Vienna. set up his tri-colored flag. 

But there was no use in trying to make peace, 
for the French looked on all monarchs as mere 
wolves, and besides, they wanted to have the emi- 
grants driven from Germany, and to seize the 
Netherlands. So war was decided on, but just be- 
fore it began Leopold fell ill, and died in his 45th 
year, in February, 1792. His Empress, Marie 
Louisa of Spain, died of grief three months later. 
Like his mother, he had a family of sixteen cliil 
dren, of whom all but two lived to grow up. The 
second son, the Archduke Karl, became a great 
general. Leopold had tried to hold things together, 
but everything in Germany was in a rotten state, 
and he was happy in dying before the troubles 
came to a head. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

FRANZ II., . . 1792. 

I ?RANZ II. succeeded his father just as the war 
■*■ had begun, and the Prussians, under Fer- 
dinand, Duke of Brunswick, and accompanied by 
the King himself, were crossing the Rhine, accom- 
panied by a large force of French emigrants, who 
burned to rescue their King and Queen. Several 
places were taken, but instead of pushing on at 
once, before Paris was prepared, the Duke of 
Brunswick put forth a proclamation, calling on the 
French to return to their duty, and threatening not 
to leave one stone of Paris on another if a hair on 
the head of any of the royal family was touched. 

This put the whole French nation in a fury ; they 

nocked to join the army, and, ill-fed and half-trained 

though they were, they beat the Prussians at 

Valmy, and drove them beyond the Rhine, and at 

429 



430 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

the same time the Paris mob, in their fright and 
anger, massacred all the royalists in the prisons for 
fear they should join their friends outside. 

The Austrian army had likewise entered France, 
but was entirely defeated at Jemappes, and had to 
retreat before the French. The Netherlands, where 
Austrian rule was hated, immediately rose and 
made themselves into a Republic, under the pro- 
tection of France, and at Paris the captive king 
was put to trial as a traitor who had called in the 
foreign enemy, and was executed. 

All Europe was indignant, and the French de- 
clared war on all the states at once, with a fierce 
energy that was too •much for the old-fashioned 
habits of the Germans and Austrians, who were 
beaten again and again. Franz himself joined the 
arm}- in the Netherlands, and for a time gained the 
advantage, but was beaten by General Pichegru at 
Tournay, and was again defeated at Fleurus ; so 
that he had to fall back while the French entered 
Holland, and moulded the Republic to their own 
fashion. 

Prussia was called off from the war by a great 
rising in its ill-gotton possession, Poland led on by 
a gallant noble named Kosciusko, who hoped to 
win freedom for his country. Friedrich Wilhelm 



Franz II 431 

was obliged to call on Russia to help him to put 
down the revolt, and the three robbers, Prussia, 
Austria, and Russia, quarrelled over the plunder, 
so that Prussia would no longer hold to the alliance 
with Austria, but made a seperate peace with 
France in 1795. 

Then the French army, under Bonaparte, crossed 
the Alps, and attacked the Austrian power in Italy, 
where they gained wonderful successes. The Arch- 
duke Karl was fighting gallantly with the other 
French troops in Germany, but the quick move- 
ments of the young generals were a great deal too 
perplexing to the old German soldiers, who were 
used to go by the old rules of 100 years ago, and 
the French drove them back everywhere. The 
army of Italy was driving the Austrians back into 
th%ir own country, though on every height in the 
Tyrol stood the brave chamois hunters, marking 
the invaders down with their guns ; but there was 
no stopping Bonaparte, and he came out on the 
northern slope, so that Vienna felt how wise Maria 
Theresa had been in not letting the fortifications be 
taken down. The Emperor sent Iris little children 
away into Hungary, and the city made ready for a 
siege. 

But the army on the Rhine could not fight its 



43*2 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

way across to join Bonaparte's army, and he could 
get no more men without going himself to France, 
so he took upon himself to make peace, and a treaty 
was .made at Campo Formio, by which Austria 
gave up the Netherlands and the North of Italy, 
and was to have in return the old city of Venice, 
wlrieh the French seized in time of peace, and made 
over to Franz. He was not ashamed to accept it 
though it had never belonged to Austria, not even 
to the German Empire. 

There was a little calm in Europe while Bona- 
parte went off on his expedition to Egypt. During 
this time Friedrich Wilhelm II. of Prussia died, 
in 1797, having apent all the treasure his two 
predecessors had laid up, and leaving his country 
in a much worse state than that in which he had 
received it, His successor, Friedrich Wilhelm Ilk, 
was personally a much better man, and had a most 
excellent wife, Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, but 
he was a weak man, and let his father's old ministry 
go on with the same mean and shabby policy as 
before. 

The French kept few of their promises in the 
treaty, and the Austrians, thinking their best troops 
and most terrible captain would be lost in Egypt, 
believed that this would be the time to win back 



Franz II. 433 

what had been lost to them, and again joined Eng- 
land and Russia in declaring war upon France. 
The Russian army came through Austria into Italy, 
and nearly conquered back Lombardy and Tuscany, 
but the Czar declared that everybody should have 
their own again, and Franz did not choose to 
give up Venice, besides which they were always 
ready to dispute about Poland. However, the 
Archduke Karl was successful on the Rhine, and 
things went hopefully till Bonaparte suddenly 
came home from Egypt, hurried to Italy, and in 
the great battle of Marengo so entirely beat the 
Austrian General Melas that the French gained 
back all they had lost. 

In Germany the Archduke Johann was trying to 
defend Bavaria against the French, under Moreau, 
and on the 1st of December, 1800, gained a little 
advantage over him when between the Rivers Inn 
and Iser. Setting out in the middle of the night, 
Johann marched through the forest of Hohenlinden, 
in the midst of a heavy snowstorm, hoping to sur- 
prise the- French in their camp; but the enemy 
were up and elert, and there was a dreadful battle, 
fought in the midst of such thick snow that the 
soldiers could not see one another, only the flash 



434 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

of the muskets on either side, and 7000 fell on each 
side. 

"Few, few shall part, where many meet ! 
The snow shall be their winding-sheet. 
And every turf beneath their feet 
Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.,, 

Hohenlinden ended in the utter defeat of the Arch- 
duke, and Franz was again forced to make peace, 
at Luneville, giving up to France all the lands be- 
yond the Rhine, and acknowledging the Republics 
that had been formed out of the states of the Em- 
pire and its own lands. The princes who thus lost 
their lands received property and cities that used to 
be free in Germany. Forty-eight cities were thus 
stripped of their freedom, and only Lubeck, Ham- 
burg, Bremen, Frankfurt, and Nuremberg remained 
free. 

In these evil times there were greater men in 
Germany in literature than at any other time The 
ablest poet of them all was Goethe, who lived at 
the little town of Weimar, admired by the Duke, 
and making a world of poetry for himself, in which 
he was so wrapped up that he cared nothing at all 
for the changes and misfortunes of his country. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

FRANZ II., 1804-1806. 

AFTER the peace or Luneville, Napoleon Bona- 
parte made himself Emperor of the French, 
and Franz II. congratulated him ; but it was not 
long possible to avoid war with such a neighbor. 
The Emperor was very much affronted by all the 
North of Italy, which had been made into little Re- 
publics under French protection, being attached to 
the new Empire, as if it had belonged to France. 
Moreover, because Hanover belonged to George III. 
of England, with whom France was at war, it was 
seized by French troops, but the German princes 
were some of them afraid of Napoleon, some daz- 
zled by his glory, and it was not easy to move them 
against him. When Franz resolved to renew the 
war, and called the princes together, the Prussians 
were bribed by Napoleon by being allowed a share 

435 



436 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

of Hanover, and the Elector of Bavaria desired 
leave to wait till his son, who was traveling in 
France, should be safe out of the enemy's country. 
Franz was angered at this, and sent General Mack 
to occupy Bavaria ; and the Duke of Wurtemburg 
and Markgraf of Baden, who were already ad- 
mirers of Napoleon, were so angered at this step 
that they likewise went over to the French interest. 
Napoleon hurried into Bavaria with his troops so 
suddenly that Mack, who was a dull heavy man, 
was quiet stupefied, and let himself be cut off from 
Vienna and shut into Ulm, where he soon yielded 
to the enemy, with his army of 30,000 men. 

By this time the Czar Alexander of Russia was 
coming to the help of Austria. Franz went to 
Presburg to meet him, and left Vienna undefended, 
so that it fell into the hands of the French, and 
Napoleon lodged in Maria Theresa's palace at 
Schonbrunn. 

The Austrians and Russians, however were 
marching on him, and at Austerlitz, on the 2nd of 
December, 1805, there was a great battle, in which 
they were so totally defeated that Franz lost heart, 
and though his brothers were coming up with large 
armies, and the Russians would not have deserted 
him, he made another peace with France at Pres- 



Franz II 439 

burg, giving up Venice to the new kingdom of 
Italy, and his own faithful dukedom of the Tyrol 
to Bavaria, while the Elector of Bavaria and Duke 
of Wurtemburg were made independent kings, and 
Cleves and Berg were made into a Grand Duchy 
for Napoleon's brother-in-law, General Joachim 
Murat. 

The German princes were persuaded to form 
themselves into what was called the Confederation 
of the Rhine, with the Kings of Bavaria and Wur- 
temburg at its head, and the French Empire for 
their so-called protector, detaching themselves en- 
tirely from the great old Holy Roman Empire, 
which reckoned back through Karl the Great to 
Caesar Augustus. The old Germanic League, with 
its Electoral college and its Diets, and the Kaisar 
at the head of all, was entirely broken up, and 
Franz II. resigned its crown on the 6th of August, 
1806. He still remained King of Hungary and Bo- 
hemia and Archduke of Austria, and it would have 
been in better taste so to have called himself ; but 
he would not give up the title of Emperor, though 
that really meant the commander of princes, and so 
he termed himself Hereditary Emperor of Austria. 

Prussia was much disturbed at the Germanic 
Confederation, and Napoleon wanted to break 



440 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

clown the power of that little soldierly kingdom, so 
though it had been neutral during the war, he 
picked a quarrel with it by threathening to give 
Hanover back to the King of England, and by 
most unworthy slanders of the Queen of Prussia, 
Louise of Mecklenburg. She was a good and 
lovely woman, and everybody loved her, but she 
was known to have been much grieved at the un- 
manly way in which her country had stood still all 
this time, and therefore he hated and maligned her. 
If she had been able to stir up her husband before 
the battle of Austerlitz, it might have been of some 
use, but it was too late when, in 1806, he called on 
Napoleon to remove his armies from Germany. 
The country was so delighted that the young men 
sharpened their swords on the steps at the door of 
the French ambassador at Berlin. The Russian 
Emperor Alexander came to promise his support, 
and joined hands with the Queen at midnight over 
the tomb of Friedrich the Great to confirm the 
alliance, then went back to send the aid he 
promised. Prussia would have done wisely to wait 
for it, but the whole nation rose eagerly in arms, 
and, uniting with Saxony and Hesse, raised an 
army of 150,000 men, who were placed under the 
Duke of Brunswick, now seventy-two years of age. 



Franz II. 441 

They had risen too late to act with Austria, too 
soon to act with Russia, and Napoleon was upon 
them at once, meeting them in Saxony, where he 
forced the passage of the Saale, killing the brave 
young Prince Ludwig of Prussia, the King's brother 
on the bridge. 

On the 14th of October, 1806, a dreadful battle 
was fought at Jena, where the Prussians were 
ill-commanded, and their valor only led to the 
slaughter of large numbers. Poor Queen Louise 
was in her carriage within sound of the guns, and 
had to drive away without knowing her husband's 
fate. He was safe, but the Duke of Brunswick 
was mortally wounded, and 20,000 men lay dead on 
the field. General Blucher with the survivors, 
roamed about for three weeks and fought a sharp 
battle at Lubeck, but had to surrender. 

The King and Queen fled to Konigsberg, while 
the French entered Berlin, and Napoleon sent off 
all the relics of the great Friedrich as trophies to 
Paris. August III. of Saxony joined the Germanic 
Confederation, and was forgiven, but Napoleon 
punished the others who had dared to stand out 
against him with brutal harshness. He would not 
let the wounded old Duke of Brunswick lie down 
to die in peace, but said he might go to England, 



442 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

and hunted him as far as Altona, where he died. 
In memory of him his son raised a regiment 
entirely dressed in mourning, with a skull and cross- 
bones as their badge, and these Black Brunswick- 
ers made it their business to fight wherever the 
French could be attacked. 

The French were going to push on into Polish 
Prussia, when Alexander of Russia came down 
with his army, and fought two terrible battles at 
Eylau and Friedland, in which, though he was 
scarcely worsted, he was forced to retreat and 
Konigsburg was left open to the enemy, so that 
Friedrich Wilhelm and Louise had to retreat to 
Memel. 



CHAPTER XL VII. 

FRENCH CONQUESTS. 
INTERREGNUM., 1807-1815. 

A FTER the two doubful battles, Russia deserts 
■^ *- ed tlie cause of Prussia. Alexander and 
Napoleon made peace at Tilsit, and sent for the King 
of Prussia to hear what they would leave to him. 
The Queen came with him, hoping to obtain better 
terms, but Napoleon treated her with rude scorn, 
and said that he had been like waxed cloth to rain. 
Once, when he offered her a rose, she said, " Yes, 
but with Magdeburg." " It is I who give, you who 
take," said Bonaparte roughly. He took away from 
Prussia all the lands on the Elbe and the Rhine, 
and these, with Brunswick, Hesse, Cassel, and part 
of Hanover, were made into a new kingdom of 
"Westphalia for his brother Jerome. Polish Prussia 



444 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

was given to the King of Saxony, Dantzic made 
a free town, and only Prussia itself left to the 
King on condition that he should only keep an 
army of 42,000 men. The Queen pined away under 
grief and shame for her country's loss, and died 
two years later, leaving her people's hearts burning 
against the French tyranny, and longing to throw 
off the yoke. Though allowed to keep only such 
a small army on foot, it was made a means of train- 
ing the whole nation to arms, for every man in turn 
served in it for a certain time, and then returned 
to his home while his place was taken by another. 
The Emperor Franz took up arms again in 1809, 
sending his brother Karl to invade Bavaria ; but 
this war turned out worse than ever for Austria. 
Karl was beaten at Eckmuhl ; and though he won 
the victory of Aspern, he was driven across the 
Danube, and had another defeat at Wagram, so 
close to Vienna that the battle was watched from 
the walls. Again peace had to be made, and all 
the southern parts of the Austrian dominions had to 
be given up, while, greatest humiliation of all, 
Franz actually was forced to give his young 
daughter Marie Louise to be the wife of this Cor- 
sican soldier, though he was married to Josephine 
de la Pagerie, whom he divorced. 



Interregnum. 447 

The Tyrol had been yielded to Bavaria, but the 
brave peasants, who were mostly farmers and 
huntsmen, rose on behalf of their Emperor, under 
an inn-keeper named Andreas Hofer, who led them 
most gallantly against the French and Bavarian 
troops, till an overwhelming force was sent against 
them, and they were crushed. Hofer was made 
prisoner, and shot at Mantua. 

Germany had fallen to the very lowest point, and 
the French proved most rude and harsh masters. 
Any sign of disaffection was punished by death, 
and the young men were called away from their 
homes to serve in the Grand Army which Napo- 
leon was raising to invade Russia ; but all the time 
there was a preparation going on for shaking them- 
selves free, and all over the German states men 
belonged to the Tugendbund, or bond of virtue, 
which was secretly vowed to free the land once 
more. Napoleon marched through Prussia, on his 
expedition to Moscow, in the summer of 1812. In 
the winter the miserable remnant of his Grand 
Army came straggling back, broken, starved, and 
wretched ; and though for very pity the Prussians 
housed and fed them, it was with the glad certainty 
that the time of freedom was come. The Emperor 
Alexander followed with his victorious army, and 



448 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Friedrich Wilhelm met him at Breslau, shedding 
tears of joy. " Courage, brother, these are the last 
tears Napoleon shall draw from you." 

Gebhard Blucher was the chief Prussian general. 
He was nicknamed Marshal Forwards, because 
that was always his cry, and Napoleon said he was 
like a bull rushing on danger with his eyes 'shut. 
All North Germany rose except the King of Sax- 
ony, who remained faithful to the alliance with 
France. Germans, Swedes, and Prussians together 
fought a battle at Liitzen with the French, round 
the stone which marked where Gustaf Adolf had 
fallen, but neither this nor the ensuing battle of 
Bautzen ended well for them, and the poor city of 
Hamburg was horribly maltreated by the French 
General Davoust. 

The Emperor of Austria sent his minister, 
Clemens Metternich, to tell Napoleon that he must 
join the rest of Germany against him. Napoleon 
was so angry that he asked what England had paid 
Austria for deserting him. Metternich scorned to 
answer, and they walked up and down the room on 
opposite sides for some time in silence. However, 
Franz sent his troops, under Prince Schwartzen- 
berg, to join the other allies, and there was a battle 



Interregnum. 451 

at Leipsic, lasting three days, from the 16th to the 
18th October, 1813, in which, after terrible slaugh- 
ter, the Allies gained a complete victory. The 
rest of Germany rose and expelled the French, and 
the Allies were able the next winter to push on 
into France itself — the Prussians, with Blucher, 
over the Rhine ; the Austrians, under Swartzen- 
berg, through Switzerland. They were beaten 
singly in many battles, but the Swedes, Russians, 
and English were all advancing on different sides, 
and even Napoleon could not make head against 
five nations at once. 

So they closed in on Paris, in April, 1814, and 
the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King 
of Prussia all met there, and encamped their troops 
in the Champs Elysees and on the Boulevards. 
They saw Louis XVIII. placed on the throne by 
the French, and then made a visit to England, 
where Blucher was received with such enthusiasm 
that people pulled hairs out of his horse's tail as 
relics. 

Napoleon was exiled to Elba, and a Congress 
met at Vienna to consider how the boundaries of 
the European states should be restored, after the 
great overthrow of them all ; but in the midst of 



452 Young Folks' History of Crermany. 

the consultations came the tidings that the prisoner 
had escaped, that the French army had welcomed 
him, and that Louis the XVIII. had again fled. 
Again the armies were mustered to march upon 
him, but only the Prussian was ready to join with 
the English in the Netherlands, where in June a 
succession of battles was fought, ending in the 
crowning victory of Waterloo on the 18th of June. 
Again the Allies occupied Paris, and Napoleon be- 
came a prisoner in the distant Atlantic island 
where he died. His wife, Marie Louise, had re- 
turned to her father with her little son, who died 
in early youth at Vienna. The Congress returned 
to its task at Vienna. The German Empire was 
not restored, and Electors and Imperial chambers 
were no more. There was only a great confedera- 
tion of thirty-nine states, including the empire of 
Austria, the kingdoms of Prussia, Saxony, Hanover, 
aud Wurtemburg, with Grand Duchies and princi- 
palities, and four free towns, Lubeck, Bremen, 
Hamburg, and Frankfort. They were not to make 
war on each other, nor with other nations, without 
each other's consent, and the Emperor was their 
president. Austria, however, only belonged to it 
for her German lands, not for the Italian states 



Inte7'regn% 



455 



which were given to her, though she gave up the 
Netherlands to be joined with Holland in one 
kingdom. The fortresses of Luxemburg, Mainz, 
and Landau were to belong to the whole Confeder- 
ation, and be garrisoned by their troops. 




CHAPTER XLVIII. 

INTERREGNUM., 1815-1835. 

THERE was a time of rest after the twenty-five 
years of war, while the world recovered 
from the ruin it had caused ; but the Congress of 
Vienna had so left matters that there was sure to 
be another disturbance soon. Prince Matternich, 
who managed everything for Franz II., kept all 
down with a firm hand, and nothing was so much 
shunned and dreaded by kings and their ministers 
as giving any power to the people. 

Franz was a weak, dull man himself, kindly in his 
ways to those about him, and his own Austrians, 
among whom he walked about in an easy, friendly 
way, loved him ; but in Italy there was great dislike 
to the Austrian power. The officers and soldiers 
who were quartered in the Italian cities were rough 
and insolent, and there were secret societies formed 

456 



Interregnum. 457 

among the Italians for shaking off the yoke and 
freeing themselves. The men of this society 
were called Carbonari ; but the time was not ripe 
for their plans — they were put down, and Franz 
kept the chief of them for many years in solitary 
confinement. Two of them Silvio Pellico and 
Alexandre Andryanc, have written interesting his- 
tories of their imprisonment. 

Franz died in 1835, and his son Ferdinand IV. was 
still more weak and dull, but Metternich still man- 
aged everything. Hanover was disjoined from 
England in 1837, as the succession was in the male 
line, and it was inherited on the death of William 
IV. by his brother Ernst August. In Prussia, 
Friedrich Wilhelm III. was succeeded in 1840 by 
his son fourth of the name, a good man, anxious to 
do right, but timid and weak, and rather confused 
between his notions of a king's power and his good- 
will to his subjects. All this time the Germans 
were improving much in the learning, the art, the 
manufactures, and all that had been hindered be- 
fore by the constant wars in which they lived. 
The northern Germans had the chief thinkers and 
writers ; the southern had the greatest taste in art. 
King Ludwig I. of Bavaria set himself to encourage 
architects, sculptors, and painters, and made his 



458 Young Folks' History of Grermany. 

city of Munich a wonderful place for beauty of all 
sorts, with splendid galleries of Pictures, ancient 
and modern. But he was a pleasure-loving man, 
who could not make himself respected, and in his 
old age he fell under the influence of a bad woman 
named Lola Montes, and his vice and folly shocked 
his people so much that he had to resign in favor 
of his son Maximilian. Prince Metternich had 
always hoped to hold things together as long as he 
lived in the old manner, and he used to say, " After 
me the deluge." But the deluge he meant came in 
his time. 

When Pope Pius IX. began to reign at Rome, in 
1846, he showed a wish to give more freedom to 
the people, and tins filled all Italy with hope, and 
caused plans to be made for throwing over their 
harsh masters. There was a revolution in France 
in 1847, when King Louis Philippe was driven 
away, and the Germans began likewise to rise, 
especially the young students, whose heads were 
full of schemes of free government. Vienna was not 
safe for the Emperor or his minister. Ferdinand 
went to Innspruck, in his faithful Tyrol, and 
Metternich fled to England. In Berlin there was 
a great rising, and some fights between the people 



Interregnum. 459 

and the soldiers, till the King promised to grant 
the changes in the government that were wanted. 

The German states all wanted to be one, and act 
together again, and send representatives to hold a 
great meeting at Frankfort to try to arrange some 
general plan. They chose the Archduke Johann of 
Austria to be the head of a new government which 
was to take them all in, but the plan turned out 
too clumsy to work, and there was nothing but 
confusion, while things were still worse in the 
Austrian dominions. Vienna was in an uproar, 
which the Emperor could not put down, and the 
Hungarians had risen, declaring that they had been 
unfairly treated, and wanted their rights. The 
wife of the Austrian governor, Princess Pauline 
Windischgratz, daughter of the general Schwartz- 
enberg, was standing at a window above the street 
at Pesth when she was shot dead, and Count Lom- 
burg was murdered. The chief Hungarian leader, 
who was named Kossuth, demanded that the Mag- 
yars, the old name by which his people called 
themselves, should be made free of all German 
power; he seized the capital and St. Stephen's 
crown, and when the Austrian troops were ordered 
to march against him, a number of the soldiers 
refused to leave Vienna or inarch against patriots. 



460 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

Some of the troops remained faithful, but many 
young students joined the mutineers, and there 
was a great fight, in which the loyal troops were 
beaten, and then a number of men rushed upon 
the minister who had given orders to march into 
Hungary, and killed him. The Emperor, whose 
health was weak, and whose hand was not strong 
enough to rule in such times, went to his palace at 
Almutz, grieved and overwhelmed at such treat- 
ment from the Viennese, among whom he had been 
wont to walk about without any state, and to talk 
on the most kindly terms, like all his forefathers 
since Maria Theresa, meeting every one freely on 
the Prader, the beautiful public garden of Vienna. 

The rebels shut themselves up in Vienna, and 
made ready for a siege, but the main body of the 
Austrians, and especially the Tyrolese, were still 
loyal, and troops came in numbers to Ferdinand's 
aid. After five days of much fighting and blood- 
shed the city was surrendered. Some of the rebel 
leaders fled ; the others were taken and shot. Then 
Ferdinand, feeling quite unequal to reign in such 
stormy times, called together a family council of 
his brothers and uncles, and ended by giving up 
his crowns to his nephew, Franz Joseph, a fine 



Interregnum, 461 

young man of eighteen, on the 1st of December, 
1848. 

In the meantime the Germans at Frankfort 
wanted to have a real emperor again, and begged 
Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia to accept the Im- 
perial crown, and call himself Kaisar der Deuts- 
chern, or of the Germans ; but after considering the 
matter, he decided that they were not giving him 
power enough to be of any use, and that it was 
wiser not to be only a name and shadow, so he 
refused, and all their schemes came to nothing. 
There were disturbances in Bavaria, Saxony, and 
Baden, but the Prussians helped to put them down, 
and North Germany was at peace again by the July 
of 1848. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

INTEKKEGNUM, 1848. 

r I ^HE young Emperor, Franz Joseph, had a 
-*- great deal on his hands, but ere long Austria 
and all his German states had returned to obedi- 
ence. 

In Italy the whole country had risen. The 
Austrian Marshal Radetsky had been driven out of 
Milan, and Colonel Marinovitch had been murdered 
at Venice ; the Duke of Modena had fled, the Pope 
and the Romans were on the Liberal party, and 
the King of Sardinia, Carlo Alberto, had declared 
war against Austria, and invited all the other states 
to join under him to turn the foreigners out of 
Italy. But they did not trust him, and were afraid 
of his getting too much power over them. Besides, 
the Italians talked much better than they fought, 
and Carlo Alberto was not much of a general, so 

4(52 



Interregnum. 463 

Radetsky beat him at Custoza, came into Milan 
again, and then of course his troops were harsher 
than ever towards the Italians who had risen against 
them. 

The Pope Pius IX., was afraid of fighting with 
the Austrians, and the Romans were so furious at 
his trying to draw back that they murdered his 
minister, Count Rossi, and this so much terrified 
the Pope that he disguised himself like a priest, 
and fled away on the box of a carriage to Gaeta, 
while the Romans set up a Republic. But none of 
the Italians could stand against the well-trained 
Austrian armies; so Radetsky defeated Carlo 
Alberto again at Novara, crushing his spirit so 
completely that he gave up his crown to his son 
Victor Emanuel, and died four months later of a 
broken heart. Then Radetsky laid siege to Venice, 
which held out bravely for four months, but it was 
taken at last, and the French at the same time 
restored the Papal government at Rome, so that 
Italy was very nearly in its former state ; but there 
was more and more distrust on the Austrian side, 
and hatred on the Italian. 

In the meantime the Hungarians had declared 
themselves independent of Austria, elected a Diet, 
and put Kossuth at the head. Franz Joseph could 



464 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

not subdue them, and asked the help of the Em- 
peror Nicholas of Russia. The united Austrian 
and Russian armies defeated the Magyars, and put 
down the insurrection. The leaders escaped to 
Turkey, and Kossuth came to England, and after- 
wards went to live in America. 

Still things in Germany were not in a state that 
could last, and there was much restlessness every- 
where. In 1859 the Italians, having learned a 
lesson by their former failure, united again, and 
this time under the King of Sardinia, with the help 
of Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. The 
Austrian forces were beaten at Magenta, and then 
at Solferino; but afterwards Franz Joseph met 
Napoleon at Villa Franca, and persuaded him to 
forsake Victor Emanuel, and favor the setting up 
of a Confederation of all the little Italian states, 
instead of making them one strong kingdom ; but 
the Sardinian king would not consent to this, and 
the people of the Tuscan and Lombardy dukedoms 
insisted on being made part of his kingdom. So 
they were given to him, and all Lombardy as far as 
the Mincio, but only on condition that he should 
give up to the French his own old dukedom of 
Savoy. Seven years later, in 1866, Venice turned 



Interregnum. 465 

out the Atistrians, who had so unjustly been placed 
there by the first Napoleon, and a war began for 
freedom. 

But Franz Joseph had another Avar on his hands 
by that time. The gentle undecided Friedrich 
Wilhelm III. of Prussia died in 1861, and was 
succeeded b}^ his brother Wilhelm I., whose prime 
minister was Otto von Bismarck, an exceedingly 
able man, and one who had no feeling against Avar, 
but said that " blood and iron " AA^as the only cure 
for all the difficulties of Germany. His first Avar 
was about the German duchies of Holstein and 
Lauenburg, Avhich had belonged to the Kings of 
Denmark just as Hanover did to the Kings of Eng- 
land, and on the death of the last of the male line 
of Denmark, the Germans declared that they ought 
not to pass to the neAV King Christian IX., avIio 
inherited in the female line. The Danes on the 
other hand said that these two duchies were one 
Avith SchlesAvig, and could not be divided, and 
there was a sharp war, all the Germans, Austrians 
and all, joining in it. Prussia was much too strong 
for Denmark, and no one would help the poor little 
kingdom, and the King Avas obliged to give up to 
Prussia and Austria all the three duchies of Schles- 



4G6 Young Folks History of Germany. 

wig, Holstein and Lauenburg, though the Danes 
were burning with anger and grief. Then came a 
dispute between Prussia and Austria, and Wilhelm 
made an alliance w T ith Victor Emanuel, and prom- 
ised to go on fighting in Germany until Austria 
should be forced to give up Venice. 

Next Count Bismarck proposed that Prussia 
should have the North German states, and Austria 
the South, and that there should be an Assembly- 
elected by all the people to settle the affairs of the 
Fatherland, as .all Germans love to call their 
country. This came to nothing, and the two great 
Powers prepared for a great fight as to which should 
be the real head of Germany. Saxony, Hanover, 
Hesse-Cassel, and Nassau, though northern states, 
all took the side of Austria, and sent their forces 
to join the Austrian army in Bohemia. 

Count von Moltke was placed at the head of 
the Prussian army, and at once sent a division to 
seize Hesse-Cassel and the Elector in it. Other 
troops were sent to seize Saxony and Hanover. 
George V. of Hanover was blind, but he was with 
his army at Gottingen, trying to join the Bavarians, 
and his troops gained a victory at Langensalza, but 
It only served to make the fall of Hanover glorious, 



Interregnum. 467 

and he yielded in June, 1866. Then the Prussians 
marched into Saxony, and, having mastered that 
country, entered Bohemia. They were the best 
armed and best trained soldiers in Germany, and 
their needle-guns carried all before them. The 
battle of Koniggriitz, on the 2nd of July, was very 
hotly contested, and was for a long time doubtful, 
but in the end the Austrians were forced to retreat, 
having lost double as many men as the Prussians. 
Victory after victory followed, and then peace was 
made at Prague, in August, by which Austria gave 
up her claims to be a part of Germany, and to have 
any share in the Confederation. 

Moreover, Prussia kept as her own, Hanover, 
Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and Frankfurt; and though 
Bavaria, Saxony, Wurtemburg, and Baden still 
remained as states, with their own princes over 
them, they are under the power of Prussia, Avith 
an obligation to fight under her in time of war. 
All the states in the north owned Prussia as their 
head, and though there was violence and injustice 
in the means by which the union was brought 
about, it is good for the people not to have so large 
a number of very small courts, each with all the 
expenses of a separate government, and some really 



468 



Young Folks' History of Germany. 



depending on the duties on hired horses, and, what 
was worse, on licences to gaming houses, to which 
the vicious of all Europe thronged. It is an 
immense benefit that those at Spa, Baden, and 
other places were put an end to. 




CPIAPTER L. 

WILHELM 1 1S70-1S77. 

THE growth of Prussia, which had only been 
a kingdom since the seventeenth century, 
made the French nation jealous and all Europe 
uneasy. 

In the meantime there had been a long course of 
disturbances in Spain, and the people having driven 
out their own queen, were looking for a new royal 
family. They offered their crown to Leopold, 
Prince of Hohenzollern, a cousin of the King of 
Prussia ; but as soon as the French heard of the 
plan, they were furious. To prevent war, Leopold 
at once gave up all intention of being King of 
Spain ; but this would not satisfy the French, who 
really only wanted an excuse for measuring their 
strength with that of Prussia, and of trying once 
more to get the Rhine for their frontier. So the 



470 Young Folks History of Germany. 

French ambassador to Prussia met King Wilhelm 
in the public promenade at Ems, and demanded of 
him a pledge that under no possible circumstances 
should Leopold of Hohenzollern ever accept the 
crown of Spain. Wilhelm did not choose to an- 
swer a request so made in such a place. The 
French declared that lie had insulted their ambas- 
sador, and war was at once declared. All Ger- 
many felt that the real cause of the war was the 
desire of France to win the lands up to the Ehine ; 
so not only the Prussians, but the newly overcome 
countries, also the Bavarians and South Germans, 
felt the matter concerned the Fatherland, and took 
up arms. 

From one end to the other of Germany was sung 
the song of " the Watch on the Rhine," and the 
young men went forth to join the army, with the 
tears and farewells of their families, in a high 
spirit of devoting themselves for their country. 
The fight began on the borders of France, Count 
Moltke being again the manager of the arm)', 
though the King was at its head. The French had 
actually crossed the frontier, under their Emperor 
himself, boasting and triumphing, and talking of 
again setting up their eagles at Berlin, and making 
a great triumph of their first little success. But 



Wilhelm I. 471 

that was all ; at Weissenburg and at Worth they 
were routed, and again, at Saarbrucken, and the 
Crown Prince of Prussia marched across the 
Vosges mountains, leaving part of the army to be- 
siege Strasburg. All round Metz, the city where 
there had been so much warfare between France 
and Germany, there was fierce fighting, but al- 
ways the Germans gained, until they had shut one 
great French army into Metz. Marshal McMahon 
hastened to help his countrymen, but the Germans 
met him in the vicinity of Sedan, on the 1st of Sep- 
tember, and in another long and terrible battle 
King William gained the victory. MacMahon was 
severely wounded, and Napoleon III. was forced to 
give himself up as a prisoner. 

Then the Crown Prince marched on to lay siege 
to Paris, while Ins father entered Rheims. The 
Government which the French had set up declared 
that they would not part with a foot of ground, and 
on the other hand the Prussians were resolved that 
ELsass and Lorraine should be given back to Ger- 
many, and so the war went on. The rule the Ger- 
mans observed was that no person who did not 
fight should be injured, and that of course real sol- 
diers should be treated as prisoners of war ; but if 
the people of the country shot at them, that the} r 



472 Young Folks' History of Germany. 

must be treated as robbers and murderers ; and if 
a German were attacked in a village, it was burnt, 
and one or more of the men put to death. On the 
whole, these rules were observed ; and though there 
were miseries and horrors, they were not so bad as 
in former Avars. 

Strasburg was taken first, then Metz, and the 
armies which were raised by the French to relieve 
Paris were beaten before they could come up. All 
Germany was full of enthusiasm and delight. The 
South Germans wished to be one again with the 
North Germans, and King Ludwig II. of Bavaria 
proposed to the other princes that they should 
choose the King of Prussia to be German Emperor. 
Wilhelm was before Paris at the time, living in 
Versailles, the most splendid palace in France, and 
there it was that the deputation came to him and 
offered him the crown of the Empire, and he was 
proclaimed in the hall of mirrors, so that the old 
times of proclaiming an Emperor at the head of a 
victorious army seemed to have come back. 

The next day the Parisians tried to sally out, but 
in vain, and they were nearly starved out, so that 
they made up their minds to surrender. On the 
1st of March a small portion of the troops entered 
the city, but the feelings of the French were spared 



Wilhelm I. 



473 



by the Emperor, who abstained from making a 
triumphal entry. A treaty was made by which 
France had to pay 5,000,000,000 of francs towards 




WILHELM I. 



the expenses of the war, and to give up Elsass 
and Lorraine to Germany. These places had in- 
deed been unjustly gained, but they had belonged 



474 Young Folks History of Germany. 

to the French for so many years that the inhabit- 
ants much disliked the change, and at Strasburg 
the French tricolor continued for more than a year 
to wave on the top of the spire of the cathedral, 
because no one who could climb it safely would go 
up to put the German eagle in its stead. 

The first diet of the Empire was held in 1871, 
and the constitution was settled ; but it is not the 
same with the old Holy Roman Empire, either in 
power or size. It only extends over the German 
soil, and has nothing to do with Italy; and the 
powers of each of the kingdoms, and other states 
that belonged to it, are clearly defined. The present 
Emperor is Wilhelm, son to the Friedrich Wilhelm 
III. and Louise, who suffered so much from Napo- 
leon I. ; and his eldest son, the Crown Prince of 
Prussia, is married to the eldest daughter of Queen 
Victoria. 



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